Some Guy!

If you miss a deadline, start preparing your CV. If your boss misses a deadline, see previous advice. Moving to a new engine can always be risky, as when things don't go to plan, you can't necessarily sell what you've produced. That's a lot of time investment that doesn't get repaid through sales. I just hope we can look back at this all in 5 years and laugh.

The Ashes Cricket series had no alternatives, no did many other sports titles that had the same pattern and fate. Having competition doesn't change the situation. You can argue 'there's a market', but so did Ashes Cricket, so did many others, but it took years for anyone else to make use of that market. With FM, what's made it special is how good it was for a niche game. There's a solid chance that nobody fills that niche in the way that FM did. In fact, a small, dedicated market, can actually be a problem in some ways. It can be fairly resistant to change in sales from quality, giving no real reason to try.

Except they didn't 'finish PES off', the series is still going, as a cheap unfinished card game that subsists off whales. Again, they may not be able to delay further than March, or potentially a couple of months after that. The fear is that if they have nothing to show in January, then even May/June is too soo. If they are forced to put something out, like many a sports game preceding them (eg Ashes Cricket 2013, and the like), it may end up being an 'early access' game as a service Football Manager. It can be more complicated than that. Penalty clauses, etc, aren't out of the question for this kind of thing. If the losses would be large enough, it may just make sense to cop a the reputation hit and release something unfinished. We've seen it all before (eFootball, Ashes Cricket 2013, various Rugby games), or as noted above, it could trigger a move to a game as a service model. The fact is that in all the discussion that has followed their silence, they have remained silent. That only happens when there are real problems behind the scenes. They can't point to: 'it's not time yet', as they are past their own deadline. The likely reason they are staying silent because the speculation is ultimately less damaging than the actual situation.

Licensing is the big issue. It's not as simple as just skipping FM25. They have licensing agreements, they can't just say 'lol, we go again next year'. This is the exact thing that happened to the PES series with the eFootball relaunch. If something doesn't come next month, and I've got to be blunt about this, I see no possible way something even looking like a complete game could if they're not willing to show something off at this point, then the FM series as we know it is over. In PES' case, they panicked, made a season update for their older game to buy them a year (and charged near full price for it), and still weren't finished, rebranded it from eFootball 2022 to eFootball, and now run a service model. If SI have nothing to show us on this new game now, they won't have a full game in November either. eFootball isn't finished even now, and it's 2025. I'd prepare for an announcement of an early access service model FM next month.

Likely that their system needs a specific date, and they don't want to risk putting one earlier. SI have only ever said March to my knowledge.

You couldn't, nothing has changed. Just reddit doing reddit things.

No. Historically, a game not being able to show gameplay or any real footage within 2 months of release is usually a sign that it won't be able to release as well. It's not just that they've missed their own deadline, it's that we're in vapourware territory in regard to what we've been shown.

This is basically the point right now. If they fear showing us the game, then it's pretty much unimaginable that it's in a shippable state come March. A game that could be sold in March would be in beta at this point, ironing out issues. Them not being able to cobble together some gameplay by their own deadline says it all. The big issue now is what they do with the licensing and financial points, because it'd be near a miracle if a complete game launched for this season. Releasing an incomplete game after a delay could be a deathblow to niche series like this, but depending on the licensing deals, etc, they may not really have a choice.

I fear we won't to be honest. Being a fan of niche sport series, there is a near universal rule that when they fear showing the game, it always means that the game is an utter mess at that point. It's February now, if they can't show us something now, what comes in March will not be of any quality. Given the radio silence, it seems apparent that the only reason a game will be released in March is licensing and financial year requirements. I wish SI all the best.