Should game devs be worried about the cancellation of FM25?

There's been quite a lot of gloomy speculation about a potential video game crash coming. After heavy layoffs over the past two years, the cancellation of big budget titles continues to add fuel to the idea that the numbers aren't adding up.

We saw several disappointments last year. Sony's Concord was the biggest flop, while Ubisoft's Star Wars Outlaws failed to ignite and the company delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows and disbanded its Prince of Persia team. Now Sega and Sports Interactive have scrapped Football Manager 25 (FM25), which has inevitably added to the sense of malaise.

But does FM25's cancellation really suggest a video games crash is more likely? No, it doesn't. Sure, it's a surprising move for an annual sports franchise, but FM25 was so far delayed that it reached the point where releasing it now would make little sense.

The Football Manager games are usually released in November, early in European football seasons. Releasing one halfway through the season would be terrible timing for a football game, and it would mean barely half a year on the market before the release of a successor, FM26, presumably in November of this year.

Thus, the cancellation of the game is not because of numbers or a lack of demand (Sports Interactive has said that all pre-orders will be automatically refunded) but of time. We were promised that the game would be major leap forward for the series, but it seems achieving that in the time available was overly ambitious.

"Whilst many areas of the game have hit our targets, the overarching player experience and interface is not where we need it to be," Sports Interactive said in a statement. "As extensive evaluation has demonstrated, including consumer playtesting, we have clear validation for the new direction of the game and are getting close – however, we're too far away from the standards you deserve.

"We could have pressed on, released FM25 in its current state, and fixed things down the line - but that's not the right thing to do. We were also unwilling to go beyond a March release as it would be too late in the football season to expect players to then buy another game later in the year." The company says it's now focusing on polishing things for FM26, which is still slated for a November release.

Some still fear we're at the beginning of a 'Second Video Game Crash', the first being that of 1983. But despite the turbulence and devastating layoffs, sales appear to be holding up pretty well overall, with a record year in 2023. According to figures on Statista, there was a slight dip in the US in 2024, but sales in Europe actually rose.

Things are very different today compared to 1983. There's lots of competition because there are lots of publishers. And it's hard to conceive we're really in the midst of a video game crash when the PS5 Pro has just been released, Nintendo is expected to release Switch 2 on 2 April, and Grand Theft Auto 6 is on the way.

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