https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6564634/2025/08/29/miles-jacobson-football-manager-interview-fm25-fm26/

Athletic Interview. I'll copy paste key parts from last thread:
>Football Manager 25 cancellation explained: Why? Financial impact? What about content creators? Football Manager 25 was cancelled last week — this is what it means for the company behind it, fans and content creators For Jacobson, the decision to cancel FM25 came just before Christmas. He received a build of the game and was going to spend a few days playing it before coming back from his break with notes. The 54-year-old, who has been at Sports Interactive for over 25 years, quite quickly came to the realisation that features were missing from the build. He cites the inability to find his youth squad before adding, “I literally sat there and just couldn’t find things in my own game. It was pretty embarrassing. It was within an hour that I sat there and thought: ‘We can’t release’.”

>>“Working with Unity natively, you’re actually programming in a language called C# (or C Sharp), whereas historically, we’ve always programmed in C++,” he says. “We were then expecting it to take about two weeks to do all the work of converting the C++ code into C#. Some of it took two weeks, some of it took nine months. “Whilst we’ve got some of the underlying code that drives the game, the whole user interface (UI) had to be written from scratch. The graphics all had to be redone. The database was restructured in certain areas. A lot of the code that was in C++ still needed work done to be able to be translated into C#, so there was definitely a lot more work than we were expecting, even though we’d done the pre-production stage.” Jacobson is insistent that none of the blame should be on Unity in light of this. The process of choosing the American-developed game engine as Football Manager’s new system was named ‘Project Dragonfly’. It was a collective effort to assess different options on their graphical quality, workload for artists and programmers, and whether they could be used to build the game’s UI. Unity came out on top. “I completely support the team on that decision and still believe it was the right decision,” Jacobson insists. “With future games, we’ll still be optimising everything in regard to the game engine, but that heavy lifting is done now.”

>>So, what of FM26? “It’s not what FM25 was going to be, because that was a mistake,” Jacobson says. “There is a lot of FM25 in there. There’s also some more FM24 things in there than there were going to be and there are some things that we already had down for FM26 that are now in there.” One aspect of the cancelled FM25 that has been deemed a mistake was the desire to move away from drastic changes to the game’s UI. In Football Manager’s June 2024 development update, they stated that they would be moving away from the email system that had been in the game for over a decade in favour of a ’tile and card’ system. The idea was to replicate how communication in football works in the real world, but Sports Interactive found that the change just did not work in a video game. As a result, a decision was made to redesign and improve the old messaging systems to provide a necessary sense of familiarity. “Whilst the game is a sequel, the best sequels always have nods back to their predecessors,” Jacobson adds. “We got rid of too many of them, trying to be too ambitious. It’s all well and good saying everything’s new, but we’ve been the best football management game in the market for 30 years — why would you throw all of that out? So we brought some of that familiarity back in.”
>The first of these was a result of collective human error, as multiple people forgot about a bug-fixing process that is necessary to publish a game. Jacobson says “that’s completely on us,” before adding, “The second curveball was a legal issue, but with all legal issues, you can never really say what happened. It was an email that came into Sega’s (Football Manager’s publisher) legal team that day that was definitely going to cause a delay in the release.”

>>The introduction of women’s football was part of what was planned for FM25’s release and work on that has continued for the release of FM26. At the time of writing, the number of countries and leagues in the game is in the low double figures, while over 35,000 women’s footballers have been rated ahead of their planned inclusion. When players set up the game, they can choose which leagues they want to have active, meaning men’s and women’s leagues can run side-by-side with each other, or players can just run male-only or female-only saves. “We’re really proud,” Jacobson says. “We’re doing more in year one than any other video game has done in women’s football, full stop. “Also, a massive thanks to EAFC, who have been really helpful throughout this whole process. In most of the areas where they’ve had exclusive licences in women’s football, they’ve actually agreed to carve us out so that we can have licences as well. We can’t thank them enough.” Work on FM26 started in secret. While the decision to cancel FM25 had been communicated to Sega in early January, it was not allowed to be shared internally until the end of the month because of stock market rules. Initially, some of the design team began working on what they would do if they had more time, but were not allowed to ask why. Once the announcement was made internally, the team were split into different hit squads. There were groups looking at the user interface and user experience of the game, another looking at transfers, a squad to fix the colour scheming, and others focused on more areas for improvement. Asked when he felt happy with FM26, Jacobson says: “I describe it as we’ve been in a very, very long tunnel and we couldn’t see the light at the end of it. When the new messaging system went in, we went round the bend and we could see the light at the end.

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-big-football-manager-interview-series-boss-miles-jacobson-on-what-went-wrong-with-fm25-and-what-to-expect-from-fm26

Plus Eurogamer interview. Miles really felt they could the back/forward button and search bar and think the new UI would be intuitive and have 10,000 clicks

>>2133319
>"On paper, everything looked great," Jacobson says. "The core game was there." The user experience, however, was the big problem. "You couldn't find things in-game. It was clunky. Some of the screens were double-loading. The actual game itself was working - graphically, we weren't where we wanted to be. We didn't have the big leap that we wanted; it was a very good jump, but it wasn't a leap," he goes on. Part of the big, generational "leap" Jacobson is referring to here is down to the shift from the old, proprietary engine Sports Interactive has been using with Football Manager for decades to a new version of Unity, but again that just proved even more challenging than expected.

>The Premier League, for their part, were "awesome to work with," he adds. "It was getting messages of support from them, rather than anything else. And then it was, 'we have to alert you to these clauses…'" he jokes. "Everyone who had to get paid, got paid. We didn't shirk any of that stuff, and all of our relationships are intact with all of the licenses - and there will be more licenses for FM26… which we look forward to shouting very, very loudly about at some point."

Miles truly only gives a fuck about graphics and licenses like FIFA. the underlying game/match engine is probably still the same so keep using gegenpress 4231 with physical beasts while there is a lack of good fullback regens

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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70xd5wl00zo

5 paragraph BBC "article" where they get the opinion of some random negress FM streamer over literally anyone else. Specifically about women's football, with the following quote by Miles:
>"At an event, some of [England's] Lionesses came and told me that it would never be commercially viable unless people like us got behind it," he reveals.

pls forgive him. miles is trying so hard
:cry:

Adding women's football is going to be the most kino FM decision for a very long time imo. People grumble about it now due to political/culture war issues, but once it's out we'll all be winning the Women's Champions League and coming up with crazy save ideas combining both sides of the game.

>>2133466
Getting a second set of regens to manage and then getting a second area to put my regens as staff after their playing careers sound great.

>>2133466
i'll only care about it if the graphics are excellent and the models have nice arses to look at

>>2133322
Women's football is the only interesting thing they have tried to do with the game since - I don't even know. The first 3D match engine? Porting saves from year to year is cool as a technical thing I guess

I don't really see what's interesting about adding women's football. it's just the same game but now with a database filled with players I don't know. I could just play with fake names and get the same effect

>we've actually got shills here now
top kek

It really depends if women's football actually plays differently. If it's just the same match engine, what's special about it? They should also simulate periods and higher ACL risk but they won't.

>>2133466
>tfw season ending pregnancy [again]

>cancelled because even Miles realised the new UI was absolute dog shit and couldn't find anything
As expected of SI

I hope you can completely delete women’s football from the game. I’d rather manage an Indian team than a woman’s football team.
At the very least I hope they behave as separate entities a la Bolton women’s team is a separate club to Bolton wanderers

>>2134336
That's already been confirmed.

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Underwhelming if true.

>>2134430
out of context is a fucking hack

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>>2133313
Uhhhhh bros?
Why did they remove all the comments and unlist their latest trailer?

>>2134499
It's been unlisted and comments have been turned off since they published it.

>>2134512
Nuh uh, I remember commenting on it

>>2134430
weird that they've been so far behind on middle eastern leagues in general, especially in the gulf you'd think there are enough FM players/research autists to justify it. It felt like a big hole in the game world even before the Saudis started throwing all that money around

Guess, still no Brazil hm?

>>2133825
Yeah it's a huge undertaking from them, I think a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to implement it. It's not just different players, they've re-done all motion capture with women, they've had to separately weight attributes, they've had to scale down the transfer system, etc. I think it's going to be a hit once it's out.


>>2134544
Yeah I agree, they've been slow with new leagues. I can't imagine the Saudis, for example, were driving a hard bargain for licensing. The lack of Asian teams and only having a single African team could be much improved with little work I feel.

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>Now work from home full time
>Much more free time
>Reinstalled FM24
>Download full English pyramid database
>Create a club, create a club for my home town and put other local semi pro teams as rivals.
>Join the pyramid at level 10

Half way through my first season boys. Oh how I've missed this.

Starting out with zero players, zero staff, trying to twist peoples arms to sign contracts for £20 p/w. This is what FM is all about.

>>2135144
Get yourself the sortitoutsi facepack and a logo pack fren!

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>>2135156
Am I able to do so with a current save?

>Almost finished first season
>Still undefeated
>Unlikely to get automatic promotion

Should be good to make it through the playoffs. Got a very talented 17 year old keeper who might be a nightmare to keep hold of as he's currently non-contracted and doesn't wish to sign one as we likely can't afford him yet.

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>>2135169
Player in question

>>2134884
fuck off shill

>>2135169
Yep, you can add graphics at any time.

>>2134364
Sorry I’m having trouble finding out which bit of my post is confirmed- which bit are you referring to?
I’m genuinely not going to buy the game if I’m forced to engage with women’s football. This isn’t a sexism thing either. Women‘s football isn’t developed enough for me to find it interesting. The skill gap is enormous

>>2135243

You'll be able to play men's football, women's, or both, it'll just be like loading different leagues.

with deadline day finally over, I'll be able to start a new fm24 save.

hopefully the dudes at sortitoutsi keep it going one more year

>>2133466
>we'll all be winning the Women's Champions League
Speak only for yourself, Miles, thank you.

>>2133071
>>2133109
If they remove the pre-game editor it's their loss, modding has become a big part of the community and might signal the advent of some online only/paywalled components too, besides, the retro databases are too kino to not mind not being able to use them.

>>2134430
The fact that South Africa was the only CAF league is bonkers. Considering the continental comp for CAF has always been dominated by Egyptian, Tunisian and occasionally Moroccan leagues its about time they added them

Miles wont add the saudi meme league because it'll completely break the game with having such a big money league with 0 reputation. Considering that league reputation is practically hard coded because theyre incompetent, itll break the game.

>>2134884
>separately weight attributes
And yet they removed weight from a players info... curious!!!

>>2135391
Theres a db updatedd every 3 days through the FM Updates. You just have to suspend your belief around fixtures. There are also mods that add a year to age and subtracr a year from contracts but ive found that janks up a lot of youth player and duplicates them.

>>2135565
Yeah if they kill modding its DoA. Wouldnt shock me if they did now that theyve been found out properly for how the match engine works.

I probably would play the retro database mods if the calendar was set back to when they actually were
I’ll never play women’s tho

>>2135784
You'll fold.

>>2135786
I can’t see it mate, if I wanted to manage a game with lower skill levels, lower skill cap, lower stakes with less growth and a lower global impact than men’s football I’d play rugby manager.
I understand women’s football has grown and in some circles now it’s quite popular but I’d rather that database player count was spent for some random African leagues, random South American leagues or even completing the European leagues. I imagine the game engine might be different and maybe have more interesting games too, but then again that would also be the case if you could manage u13s football too.

>>2135827
Sounds like all my saves desu. Anyone who plays football manager and picks a top flight team is an absolute scrub.

>>2135930
That’s the thing though init lad. You can’t take a Belarusian 2nd division women’s team to the champions league because a Belarusian 2nd divisions women’s team doesn’t exist
Their academies consist of PE lessons in school

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Absolute scenes and limbs in the North West Counties Prem Division.

>>2133825
>>2134884
you could not pay me to add female players to any database I will ever run. Waste of my processor

>>2136015
Once you witness the absolute KINO of women's football saves in /trb/ you'll fold too. All will fold.

>>2136007
>6.6 and 7.0 conceding 3 goals
wew

anybody made their youth teams a powerhouse? i assume it's possible

>>2136015
I was thinking about this yesterday because I’ve been posting about this in the thread previously and I think that they have to have women in the database even if you don’t load them as playable leagues. Reason being is that the staff have to be interchangeable amongst womens and mens football and there are already women in the staff database so I don’t think they can separate the two. Hopefully the leagues can be deleted in the game files

>>2136470
If they don't remove the pre-game editor in this edition, someone will make a file deleting every female player. And then they will remove the pre-game editor for the next edition.

>>2136470
I assume it'll just be like not loading a league in current fm. it'll just be greyed out players and no simulated results

>>2136534
this is why i don't understand the outrage, i don't ever get mad that the french leagues are in the game, i simply don't ever load them

>>2136545
I’m not sexist, i think it’s good that they’ve done it, I just hope that you can separate the worlds. If the options are when starting a new save: Men’s football, women’s football or both I will be completely happy. I don’t think this will be the case though because of how the staff database is.
Even if you don’t load a league, results are simulated and it’s going to slow my game down for some shit I couldn’t care less about.
Fyi I play with all leagues loaded so it is a concern for me

>>2135640
yeah I've tried that add a year editor file and it is just borked. I understand where they're coming from, but I have to start a new save without those files.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1zFaDzMEQA/

Damn that's crazy

>>2136968
BOYS WE HAVE ENTERED 2008 LET'S GOOOOOOO

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https://youtu.be/_cDQi5kwuHQ

Graphics have entered late ps2 era. But you can still see it's a lot of the same animations from the old engine ported over. Which is exactly what they wanted to do in the first place

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Steam page up. PC requirements. Needing a 2060 for recommended is interesting after what we saw.

>>2137013
grim grim grim

>>2137013
>Graphics have entered late ps2 era. But
No need for "but", the fact they focus on graphics and put them front and center so far is a very bad sign

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One of the screenshots from the steam page

Don't worry, I'm sure the animations will be improved next year!

>>2137013
Actually looking great, especially those intricate passing movements. Well done, Miles! can't wait for Women's League preview!!

>>2137013
The moment the release date is official i am putting a week off notice from work

Looks fucking amazing, can't wait to see what else they have for us. FM26 is going to be so fucking good.

>>2137013
The players and crowd are a massive improvement, but overall it's still got all the same janky movement of FM24, utter waste of time

Will you be starting a fresh save or will you be continuing your save from FM24?

>>2137019
>1920x1080
>has the blurriness of upscaled 1280x720
what the fuck are these tards doing over there?
the gay video they released a couple weeks ago also looked low res and blurry as all fuck

>>2137051
Definitely fresh. I have stopped updating fm24 a while ago so it doesn’t ruin the fun for me

more interested in stadium variety rather than how the players look on the pitch desu fämälämä

>>2137026
>>2137040
No browsing 4chan during work, Miles.

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shit looks worse than fucking fifa manager 2010
If I was in charge at EA I'd shit out a reskin of fifa manager 2014 just to fuck with SI
the switch versions of fifa use the same engine as the fifa manager 14 so they already have the assets for kits, player faces etc

>>2137051

My beta save will be a women's football team, I'll leave my FM24 save behind.

>>2137070
I barely paid attention to this aside from reading the cancellation a while ago, I thought they had binned miles?

>>2137084
>team of your sons via the players
KINO challenge

>>2137085
No he's still in charge. But he definitely put his job at risk by not having FM25 ready and then outright canceling. It would take multiple successive flops for him to get pushed out by sega.

>>2137049
as much of a sloppy shop as other parts of the series are, especially on the presentation side, it is obviously a ridiculous challenge to build a "match engine" that is supposed to do everything you can see in a football match. Skips and hangups with player positioning and ball positioning seem inevitable to me

>>2137066
this, especially at the lower levels, ridiculous how soulless and samey everything looks