BREAKING NEWS NEW GRAPHICS ENGINE COMING TO FOOTBALL MANAGER

I was lucky enough to be invited to the Studio this past weekend where Miles announced Sports Interactive has major changes coming to the Football Manager series.

Joined here by @FMStag

Miles and the studio have released this post here.

FM24 is the end of an era, SI intend to use this edition as a way to show off the best of everything of the past 20 years from FM04-24 and use it as a launch point into the next era of games because 

FM25 will see the studio utilise the Unity Engine for their games across all platforms. 

Unity has a deep collection of quality games like 

Fall Guys

Among Us 

 

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Cuphead 

Pokemon go

Cities: skylines

The graphics in these games look amazing so it gets me excited. So in simple terms, FM25 will have a significantly better-looking matchday experience – both on the pitch and the supporting stadium environments, alongside a vastly improved user interface that will dramatically improve how you navigate through screens and access all the information available to you as manager. We’ll also have new technology for Newgens and manager creation which are already looking promising at this early stage.

Sports Interactive will officially reveal the first looks of the new match engine in Q2 of 2024 roughly April-July 2024. 

Personally, for me, this is amazing news and it has long been one of the most requested upgrades from the community, not just a new graphics engine but also a UI revamp, which is long overdue, the team at SI know this and hopefully FM25 onwards will be a big step forward on this front too.

From talking to the team they are all passionate about the future and I left the visit feeling excited, Getting to meet people like Marc Duffy who’s head of development, Nic Madden, head of the match engine and Miles Jacobsen head of the studio and listen to them talk about the game was enlightening as the way they see the game is so much like the way members of the community I discuss the game with. But it wasn’t just them from the heads of departments down to the social team you could see the excitement of what was coming and as a fan of the game since 1996 it was amazing to see their enthusiasm hasn’t been lost. 

FM24

NEW FEATURES

• Saves from FM23 are compatible to transfer and continue on FM24 with all the new features. 
• A truer reflection of real-life football with new animation tech.

They’re also taking a big jump with animations, through new integrations with an exciting partner from the professional world of football. The first part of a multi-year shift will happen in FM24, so you’ll get some of the benefits in the next instalment, with a particular focus on ball physics and player locomotion. This lays the foundations for the bulk of improvements alongside the graphical upgrades in models, stadiums and the surrounding scenes that will be introduced in FM25 – although FM24 will still look better graphically than FM23.

The carrying of saves over from one edition to another is a feature many have requested for years so to be able to do that going forward potentially means you don’t need to end your save or skip an edition.

There are still more FM24 features to come and they will announce these soon.

Women’s football

It will finally arrive in FM25, SI has been committed to introducing this to the game and has an official release date. 

So, to sum everything up…

 FM24 – Marking the 20th anniversary of Football Manager by delivering the most complete version in the series’ history, across Steam, Epic, Microsoft Store, Game Pass, PS5, Xbox, Apple Arcade, Switch and iOS & Android for mobile.

 FM25 – For the first time in decades, a true sequel. The Unity engine will bring a new graphics engine, a fresh user interface and advanced animations, alongside the introduction of women’s football (plus lots more, across platforms).

FM23 – the most successful edition yet across more platforms than ever before but the studio wasn’t happy with the product they put out and understand the issues.

In FM09 we saw the launch of the 3d Match engine and in FM25 we are finally going to see a significant overhaul, The future is bright and the game we all love playing is going to only get better.

Thanks to the team at Sports Interactive for inviting me along at the weekend and I finish this post with a clip of where it all began…