Popular video game Football Manager has been delayed again – this time being pushed back until March next year.

The franchise is one of the more popular sports games on the market but its production this year has seemingly been laden with issues.

FM25, this year’s game, was billed by developer Sports Interactive (SI) as a “new era”, with it seeing the long-awaited introduction of the women’s game, as well as being powered by a new engine.

SI admitted that it had been a “difficult development cycle” and in an update posted in September it admitted to having faced unanticipated problems as it announced a number of features would be stripped from the latest edition.

Last month, SI said that features like international management wouldn’t be available in FM25, and that its release date had been pushed back from the start to the end of November.

Then, on Thursday, SI said that the game was delayed until March 2025.

Some fans were left despairing at the decision that will see them have just two months of the active season to play the game ahead of summer.

“After careful consideration, Sports Interactive have made the tough decision to further delay the release of Football Manager 25,” the firm said in a statement.

The additional time from the delay announced in September was said to have “not been sufficient” to ensure the developer could produce a game to the standard it wanted.

The shock announcement came just seven weeks from when the game was supposed to be released and after some fans had already pre-ordered this year’s version.

Read more from Sky News:
TikTok sued by 13 US states
Officials threaten to break up Google
Kent bear having brain surgery

In its announcement, SI continued: “Timelines were already tight and, as rightly pointed out by many of your recent comments, we were simply rushing too much and in danger of compromising our usual standards.

“This has put an enormous amount of pressure on everyone working across the studio, who are all passionately committed to delivering the best game possible.”

SI added: “We are intensely aware that this will be massively disappointing for you.

“We share that disappointment and are extremely sorry.”

A number of fans and popular Football Manager streamers and sites expressed on social media their disappointment at the decision.

SI also added that anyone who wished to claim a refund on their pre-order will be allowed to do so.