Ultimately it’s all subjective. I do think that the FM25 announcement has probably driven more interest in the franchise again than had it not happened, but like I say, I still think FM24 would have had a similarly positive response - remember, one of last years headlines was ECL licensing.
That said, we’re at a point now, and I say this ever year, where the game is pretty much feature saturated. They can’t add much that is actually new, and with that in mind, I feel this years “improvements” are much more in the pulse of what us as players want.
Like I say, it’s subjective. And like you say, we’ll never know.