Football Manager 2025: Full Rewrite in Unity Engine

In a first for SI as a studio, they publicly looked a bit further ahead beyond the next iteration of the game to reveal one of the biggest changes in the history of the Football Manager franchise.

There's interesting insight into what they’ve been up to at Sports Interactive headquarters.

Before delving into details about the 2025 edition, I recommend reading our Football Manager 2024 news and what we know about FM24.

It's also refreshing to see Miles admit that FM23 wasn't exactly what they wanted to release. Here are a couple of quotes:

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 FM23 feature set wasn’t what we’d wanted to deliver.

...for the most hardcore of players, there were fewer new features than normal.

Now let's get into the FM25 development update.

For many years now, the developers have been planning the next revolution of Football Manager, something they haven’t claimed since the 3D engine first came into the series back in FM 2009.

Considering the game's commercial success, a decision to rewrite the game completely is crucial and very risky because you can't afford to alienate the existing audience.

Thankfully, SI had the courage to take the plunge and start working on a whole new game that is necessary to propel the FM series towards new heights.

There are certain key projects in the works for some time now. Back in January 2020 a small group in the team was assigned to work out what to do to really push the studio's technology forward. This became known as Project Dragonfly.

Alongside this, they also started looking at different business models, platforms, working practices, and Games as a Service.

The original plan was a new-look Football Manager for FM22, but the pandemic and the impact this had to the studio slowed things down. FM23 became the next target, but eventually the final choice ended up being FM25.

Unity is the new engine for FM25

Football Manager 2025 (as well as FM25 Console and FM25 Touch) will be the first Football Manager releases to use the Unity game engine.

Unity powers many of the best-known games in the world, from Genshin Impact through to the Cities Skyline series.

The switch to Unity is going to give a lot more power graphically, across all formats, alongside powerful user interface tools.

A whole new UI will dramatically improve the ways you interact with the game, both inside and outside of a matchday.

There's the possibility of better-quality graphics across all supported devices, however it should be expected that the minimum system requirements will change towards more demanding specs.

FM25 will have a significantly better looking matchday experience - both on the pitch and the supporting stadium environments.

You can also expect a vastly improved user interface that will dramatically improve how you navigate through screens and access all the information available to you as manager.

It will also have new technology for Newgens and manager creation which are already looking really promising at this early stage.

The only platform that won’t benefit from the switch to Unity in time for FM25 is FM25 Mobile, but it's going to happen at some point in the future.

New animation tech

Through new integrations with a new partner from the professional world of football, you'll notice a big jump with animations.

The first part of a multi-year shift will happen in FM24 with a particular focus on ball physics and player locomotion.

This lays the foundations for the bulk of improvements to come alongside the graphical upgrades in models, stadiums and the surrounding scenes that will be introduced in FM25.

The way everything looks and moves will be far more true-to-life than ever before with FM25.

Introducing women's football

The FM25 cycle will also see the long-awaited introduction of women’s football to the Football Manager series. This was initially announced back in July 2021.

Good progress has been made in many areas, including research, the match engine and translation. There are still legal issues to iron out though.

Some key people from inside the women’s game are part of this project and helping to deliver the most authentic experience possible.

When will we get more FM25 news

The developers are aiming for the first major FM25 reveal in Q2 of 2024.

The Unity engine will bring a new graphics engine, a fresh user interface and advanced animations, alongside the introduction of women's football (plus lots more, across platforms).

For the first time in decades, FM25 is going to be a true sequel. How excited does that make you? Share your thoughts in the comments.