Football Manager 24 cannot be easily updated with new season assets, developers say

The postponement of Sports Interactive’s management simulation Football Manager 25 recently caused a stir among fans.

Almost two weeks ago it was announced that the publication would be postponed to March 2025. And that after a release in November 2024 was only announced at the beginning of October.

Unable to update Football Manager 24

Some fans then suggested that Football Manager 24 could be updated with season assets from the new Football Manager 25. But according to the studio, this is not possible.

There has been discussion about this internally, but assets from the new game cannot simply be “backported”.

“After reviewing how much work this would require, and despite an initial good response from our many licensing partners, we cannot simply take assets that we use for the FM25 and use them in the FM24 without completely rebuilding them,” it says in a statement.

“The same applies to the many new competition rules, translations and database changes that can be easily backported. The updated assets and data would again require approval from the licensor – you can’t separate that.”

“It would be a massive undertaking that would require us to take away important resources from FM25 that ensure it is of the highest possible quality. And that is a point where we simply cannot compromise.”

Sports Interactive had previously described Football Manager 25 as the “biggest technical and visual advance in the series in a generation”. The studio really wants to make sure that everything works out, even if they are probably unhappy with the situation themselves.

“It’s been a difficult year,” Sports Interactive boss Miles Jacobson told Eurogamer in September. “But it was a great learning experience!”

Football Manager 25 is now scheduled to be released in March 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.