Sports Interactive (SI) and SEGA have officially released Football Manager 26 (FM26) across multiple platforms on November 4th, 12 days after the Advanced Beta launched.
FM26 is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Mobile. The game launches after a tumultuous period, which saw SI and SEGA push back the release of FM25 and later cancel it altogether, to pour all efforts into FM26.
Most of the difficulties arose from the fact that SI moved away from its traditional game engine to Unity. This move drastically improved the graphics of FM26, as we noted in our FM26 Beta review, but it also spawned diverse UI/UX problems that didn’t go unnoticed by fans and specialized critics.
Regardless of some of the harsh criticism, Miles Jacobson, SI’s longtime Studio Director, is optimistic about the launch of FM26, according to an official statement sent to the press on November 4th.
The launch of FM26 is the start of a new era for our games.
FM26 has marked a record pre-purchase period for the series, with more than 100,000 people playing the game within the first 45 minutes of the Advanced Access Beta being live. Since then, we’ve seen more than 200,000 playing every day.
With this year’s release now available across multiple platforms, we’ll be continuing to iterate and improve as we lay the foundations for the next 20 to 30 years for the studio.
In case you have played the FM26 beta on Steam or Epic Games Store, you’ll be able to carry on with your save in the full version.
A lot of FM veterans prefer to play FM24 over FM26 right now. Credit: Leonardo Biazzi | © SEGA
Though Jacobson has highlighted the good numbers FM26 has had during the beta, a lot of players aren’t necessarily happy with the state of the game on the day of the official worldwide release.
This is largely because FM26 has gone live with the last build (26.03) that fans played during the beta period. So, the full version doesn’t include major changes to the UI, for example.
As of the time of this publication, FM26’s experience is described as “Mostly negative” on Steam, and only 27% of the 1,625 reviews are positive. Many reviews point out that FM24, which launched in 2023, is better than the current state of FM26.
Players are review bombing FM26. Credit: © Steam
As one FM26 player respectfully put in the SI Forums, SI could have prevented this situation by keeping the beta tag while the developers work on improving the game.
“I think it would be wiser if Sports Interactive keeps the beta tag despite the official release date,” user inacion said. “There are still lots of bugs, and I won’t be surprised if there’s an update every week until the end of the year at least. Removing the beta tag when there are still a lot of bugs doesn’t seem good for reputation. I already notice some improvements after last week’s patches, but there are still a lot of things to fix.”
Also read: Best FM26 Wonderkids to sign to your team
Feature image credit: © SEGA
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