Football Manager 25 Delayed until March 2025

This sounds like a disaster.

For those who don't know, Football Manager has a yearly release schedule, and the highlight of the release is that it has a database of nearly every professional player in the world, the club they play for, and an attempt to "scout" them, giving all their various attributes from passing ability, to height and weight, to their determination.

By releasing in March 2025, they're going to release the game essentially at the end of the 2024/2025 season right before players start moving to new clubs and the database becomes obsolete. Typically, around March is when they're giving deep discounts on the yearly release because they know there won't be much remaining interest in playing a game that's almost out of date.

They really shot themselves in the foot. They could have released a Football Manager 25 that was 100% FM 24 but with an updated database, they've done it before. They could have called "Football Manager 25" something like "Football Manager Next Gen" and not tied themselves to a certain season. And, if they do manage to get Football Manager 25 out in March, are they really going to be able to do FM 26 half a year later? Will anybody buy FM 25 if they know there's a FM 26 coming out so soon?