The upcoming release of Football Manager 26 might be one of the most anticipated in the history of sports management games. And rightfully so! After a long time of the series implementing only incremental changes, Football Manager 26 is the first entry in a while that will introduce several fundamental changes. However, it wasn’t meant to be the watershed entry that it’s slated to be.
Before Football Manager 26 was announced, there was Football Manager 25, or at least, there was supposed to be. For Sports Interactive, Football Manager 25 was intended to be the series’s first massive overhaul in years, boasting better visuals (thanks to the Unity Engine), a new UI, the inclusion of women’s football, and other gems. However, as development on the game got further and further, SI’s ambition seemed to outpace what the company could include in the game, as things such as international management, creating a club, and fantasy draft, among others, were all axed.
Eventually, the entire project was canned, with FM25 being cancelled after a lengthy delay. While most can read between the lines and determine why FM25 never saw the light of day, Sports Interactive has been incredibly silent on the ordeal. Until now.
Miles Jacobson: Releasing Football Manager 25 Would’ve “Damaged Us Forever”
While waiting for the first official first-look at Football Manager 26 gameplay, Sports Interactive boss Miles Jacobson did an interview with the BBC and shed light on why the company ultimately decided to cancel Football Manager 25. The short answer? SI would’ve faced reputation damage that could’ve very much put it and the FM series in dire jeopardy. But the long answer is even more enlightening and sheds light on the many issues SI faced during development.
As it turns out, when FM25 was first announced to the public, much of the advertised content wasn’t even in it. “We originally postponed the game, actually, for different reasons to the cancellation,” Jacobson told the BBC. “At the time that we postponed the game, not all of the content was inside the game… and then three things went wrong on the same day. One was a big development curveball of something we’d simply forgotten about. And then it came into the mix, and we were like, ‘How on earth can we do that with all this other stuff that we need to do?'”
Jacobson would clarify that other issues pertained to licensing and something to do with a “third party.” Had these issues been known earlier, the game would apparently not have even been announced. Eventually, planned deep dives into new features never came to fruition. This was because, behind the scenes, SI had already decided to cancel the project. “We know we looked a bit stupid. It was a little bit embarrassing, but it was also unavoidable because of these unknown unknowns that hit us,” Jacobson said.
But, according to the horse’s mouth, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. By Christmas time of 2024, Jacobson and the team had gotten lukewarm feedback from consumers and SI’s in-house QA team. But, after playing the latest build of the game for several hours, Jacobson felt it fell way short of the lofty expectations the team had placed on the entry.
“I got a build of the game just before Christmas… and about two hours in, I just said to myself, ‘This isn’t good enough. We can’t do this. This isn’t to our normal quality level.'”
After clearing it with many of the required channels, Football Manager 25 was canceled.
Blessing In Disguise?
Canceling a video game is never an easy decision for a studio (or publisher) to make. Millions upon millions of dollars worth of resources go into video game development, and sunk cost fallacy can certainly take hold. However, this much is true: Overall, the Football Manager series has been quality. And the decision to cancel Football Manager 25 instead of releasing a game that fell short of the quality players have come to expect is commendable.
On top of that, it has allowed Sports Interactive to take stock and ensure that Football Manager 26 is everything they were hoping 25 would be. Jacobson said as much in his interview, saying that cancelling FM25 allowed the development team to dissect what went wrong and how things can be better for future releases. For instance, one of the changes that was intended to be included in FM25 was a new messaging system, replacing the old email inbox. However, after several run-throughs, the team realized the system didn’t work nearly as well as they thought it would. Therefore, the cancellation allowed SI to make a system that they say will be improved in FM26.
Hopefully, this means cut features can be added as well.
