Women’s soccer teams are coming to Football Manager in 2024

engadget.com:

Sports Interactive said back in 2021 that it would bring women's soccer to Football Manager, its long-running simulation franchise. Now, we have a clearer idea of when that will happen. In a blog post that looks at the franchise's future, SI says it will introduce women's teams in Football Manager 2025, which is next year's edition.

The studio initially said it would take a while to bring women's soccer into the fold as it wanted to offer the same level of depth that it does for the men's game. Football Manager has an enormous database of tens of thousands of players, each with individual stats, bios, injury history and so on. Not only that, SI had to account for changes to the attribute systems, gender considerations for translations and different league rules when it comes to women's football.

"The facts are that we’ve made really good progress in many areas, including research, the match engine and translation," SI studio manager Miles Jacobson wrote. "But there are other areas that haven’t made enough advancements, a lot of which are legal issues. The women's game deserves to be the best it possibly can be when it is released."

Alongside the addition of women's teams, Football Manager 2025 will herald a fundamental shift for the series as SI is moving to the Unity game engine. Jacobson says this will "give us a lot more power graphically, across all formats, alongside powerful user interface tools." There will be an entirely new UI and "a significantly better looking matchday experience," while animations are making "a big jump" forward. It'll take a little longer to transition to Unity on mobile, however.

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