Sports Interactive has announced that Football Manager 2023 will be released on 8th November 2023, and that it will be coming out for PlayStation 5 for the first time. The game will also arrive across PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One – it’s day on on Xbox Game Pass for PC and consoles – and Nintendo Switch, and it will be returning to iOS through Apple Arcade.
Miles Jacobson, Sports Interactive’s Studio Director said, “FM23 marks another significant step forward for the Football Manager series as we debut on two new platforms. Fans have been calling for us to produce a PlayStation title for a number of years, so I’m excited for those players to now get the chance to experience the closest thing to being a real football manager.”
It looks like Sony finally decided to send Sports Interactive a few dev kits over the last year or two. The lack of dev kits was, infamously, the reason for Football Manager being an Xbox home console exclusive since FM21. It’s still not clear why Sony wasn’t working with them at the time, but they are now. Strangely the game is not coming to PlayStation 4, while it is a cross-gen release on Xbox.
Speaking about the return of Football Manager Touch to iOS, Miles said, “Our decision to not release a Touch game on iOS or Android in 2021 was a difficult one to take and a disappointing one for some of our fans. This exciting partnership with Apple Arcade allows us to reintroduce a popular title in a way that makes sense for us as a studio and for the wider FM community.”
This is far from the only big change, as Sports Interactive look to cut down on the amount of waste that is produced. Having switched the physical PC release from plastic packaging to recycled cardboard a few years ago, they’re now doing away with the discs as well. Every pack will feature a code that can be redeemed via Steam, Epic Games or the Microsoft Store. This will reduce the carbon footprint for FM23’s packaging by 47% compared to last year.
There’s been plenty of forward thinking developments from Sports Interactive over the past few years, both in terms of gameplay, how the game reaches players, and the breadth of the game’s recreation of football. Women’s football was announced as a multi-year project that they would be undertaking, which we might potentially see added in the next year or two – it doesn’t seem like it will be added this year, but new game features will be revealed over the coming weeks.
Looking back on Football Manager 2022, Aran said in our 8/10 review, “Football Manager 2022 is a good iterative step with the improvement of the matchday engine and the addition of the data hub. The data hub especially, as well as regular staff meetings, bring the franchise another step closer to the full management experience.”
Source: Sega