Sports Interactive has released a statement explaining why Football Manager 24 won’t receive a current season update, following the delay of Football Manager 25.
Earlier this month, the developer announced Football Manager 25 would miss its original release next month and instead will launch in March 2025 to “ensure the game quality and experience meets your expectations and our very high standards”.
Since then, fans had called for a current season update to FM24, something the developer has now said it had been “exploring since the initial internal conversation about postponing the game’s release”. However, assets from the next game cannot be “back ported”.
“Having now scoped the work that would be required, and despite a good initial response from many of our licensors, we cannot lift assets that we are using in FM25 and make them work in FM24 without recreating them in full,” a statement from Sports Interactive reads.
“The same applies to the many competition rules, translations and database changes that cannot be back ported. The updated assets and data would both be required to obtain licensor approval – they cannot be separated.
“This is a substantial undertaking which would take critical resources away from delivering FM25 to the highest possible quality, which we simply cannot compromise on.”
In its previous statement concerning the delay, Sports Interactive described FM25 as “the biggest technical and visual advancement in the series for a generation” and acknowledged it “cannot compromise the delivery of this crucial juncture in Football Manager’s history”.
The March release for FM25 will be across all platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
“It’s been a difficult year,” boss of Sports Interactive Miles Jacobson told Eurogamer in September. “[But] it’s been a great learning experience!”