Football Manager 23 reached over five million players, next iteration is the last on current engine

FM25 will be built on Unity and feature women's soccer

Football Manager 23 has been the most successful iteration in the series’ history, its developer Sports Interactive has announced. The popular management game is available via Xbox Game Pass on both PC and Xbox Series X|S alongside mobile versions and a PS5 edition.

“Before we embraced these new types of platforms, we were getting close to 2 million players a year. With FM23, we have just this month hit a once unimaginable milestone of 5m players, and it’s still growing,” the developers wrote on their website. “However, we cannot ignore that some of our longer-serving players felt that FM23’s progression had not lived up to the standards and expectations we have set over the years – and to be frank, we agree.”

The developers stated that FM23 had more than enough content and systems for new players to sink their teeth into, but that it lacked the kind of content hardcore players with several hundreds of hours in playtime would like to engage with. This is something they want to make better in the future.

Speaking of which, FM24 – the 20th game in the series – will “inarguably be the most complete version of Football Manager to date.” As a sneak peak into what the next title will offer, it has been announced that players can transfer their old save files from FM23 into FM24. This has always been a highly requested feature and will work on all platforms. It’s also planned that FM25 will support FM24’s save files, even though a big change is coming up between those iterations.

Starting with FM25, Sports Interactive will develop Football Manager on the Unity Engine.

“The switch to Unity is going to give us a lot more power graphically, across all formats, alongside powerful user interface tools. We’ve been working closely with Unity over the last few years to be able to deliver a whole new UI which will dramatically improve the ways you are able to interact with the game, both inside and outside of a matchday,” the developers explained.

FM25 will also support women’s soccer for the first time in the series’ history. More about the “revolutionary” Football Manager title will be revealed starting in the second quarter of 2024.

First, however, comes the release of FM24 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and on mobile devices later this year.