With Football Manager 2023, Sports Interactive and Sega are attempting to attract new players to the series, whilst also enriching the experience for enthusiasts.
Sports Interactive confirmed the release date for Football Manager 2023 back in August, with the game's release date being confirmed as Tuesday, November 8, 2022. It was also confirmed that the game will be available on PlayStation 5 consoles for the first time ever, having already been available on Xbox Series S/X previously, with Sports Interactive launching a new version of the game called FM23 Console this year.
Football Manager 2023 Touch will also be released on Tuesday, November 8, 2022 for Nintendo Switch and Apple Arcade, so the game can be played on iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV for the first time. Sports Interactive also confirmed that the game will feature newly-licensed competitions like the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League.
Ahead of the launch of the game, Mirror Gaming visited the Sports Interactive offices in London and had the chance to play FM23 both on PC and Console, to try some of the new features in this year's game. Mirror Gaming also spoke with Miles Jacobson, director at Football Manager, about the new features on offer.
First off, we played FM23 Console on PS5, a newly-named version of FM23 this year which is also available for Xbox Series S/X. Having played the PC and Mac version of FM religiously for over a decade, we were expecting FM23 Console to be a watered-down, less intense experience compared to the PC version.
And whilst it is a slightly less immersive experience, it's much closer to the PC version than we were expecting, with all the features and detail to please even the most hardcore of players.
There's a great new feature at the start of your FM23 Console journey which asks you how experienced you are with previous FM games. If you're completely new to the series, the game will hold your hand throughout every aspect of your new save, explaining tactics, features and more in great detail, which will be a big help for new players.
There's also been a big change in regard to the wording of particular tactical instructions, to make it clearer than ever about what specific buttons will do tactically. For example, defensive width is gone and has been replaced with instructions such as 'stop crosses', 'invite crosses', 'trap inside' and 'trap outside'.
“It's not just language change, they do other things to the previous options as well, but it just makes it clearer," Miles Jacobson told Mirror Gaming.
"More people than ever have got their coaching badges, we need to be talking in that parlance.
"More people than ever are watching Monday Night Football and wanting that analysis, these people are breaking things down a lot more. You have a lot more football hipsters - and I don't say that in a bad way - who are wanting xG, and we've added xA to the game as well.
"If we are going down these routes, then it's pretty crazy if we're not changing our language accordingly to what's being spoken about in football.
“We do describe what everything means as well, It's an educational piece for people who don't know what they are, there are very simple explanations.
Sports Interactive has obviously put a lot of work into allowing console players to use their controller to navigate through the game, with new radial menus and other features that feel quite natural after a while playing the game, even for PC players. But if you don't fancy it, you can make a mouse pointer appear by clicking the left thumbstick, allowing you to navigate the game as you would on PC or Mac.
FM23 Console also features a remodelled touchline tablet for match days, the new dynamic manager timeline and for the first time ever on console, you can give team talks, select out-of-possession tactical instructions and set recruitment focuses as the console version of the game moves scarily close parity-wise to the PC version.
Another nice touch is that during matches, the game will automatically pause in pivotal moments, something that experienced PC players will do on instinct alone, but not necessarily players who are new to the series, giving them a hint that this might be a time to make a tactical tweak or sub.
Next, we looked at the PC and Mac version of FM23 which was a pre-Alpha build, so it was far from final. But, it did give us a chance to try out some of the new features in this year's game.
A new FM23 feature that we used a lot, and something we think more experienced FM players will love, is the new Squad Planner section. Any forward planning that you'd done outside of the game previously, often in your head or on a notepad, can now be jotted down in-game and visualised in great detail.
It's essentially a secret book in digital form, allowing you to plan your recruitment for this season, the following season and the season after, ranking players in order of suitability for each position, and there's also the ability to add in external shortlisted players too, so you can visualise how your team could look. It's a really, really nice feature.
“Think how many trees we're saving by adding squad planner to the game," Says Jacobson.
“Having played the game with squad planner for a while now, I don't understand how I ever played it without it. There are some tweaks going into it before release as well so you can add players that you have on your shortlist to the planner to be able to see how they fit in.
You'll actually be able to right-click on any player in the game and add them directly to the squad planner, just making it that little bit more usable for people.
“You can do that and add them in, and then ask your assistant how they're gonna fit in or decide it yourself, so it adds a huge extra element to the transfer side of the game as well as adding an extra element to just being able to plan with the current players that you have as well, so it’s a very flexible system.
“For a load of text to be that beautiful is difficult, but it's beautiful.
“The first time I saw a squad matrix in real life, it was all on a whiteboard in a manager's office at a training ground, and I just sat there going, “well, if a manager walks in and sees that their second choice, that's not gonna be good”.
"Having it hidden away where your staff know what's there but the players don't is a very good thing.
“It's essential, and again, that ties in with the agents' stuff, but it also ties in with the recruitment meetings and has now been brought into the recruitment meetings as well so you can really plan effectively for short-term, medium, and long-term.”
Agents are now a lot more involved in transfer and contract negotiations in FM23, to replicate what happens in real life. For example, even if contract negotiations with a potential new signing, or even a key player in your current team, were to fail, you often have the chance to go to the player's agent directly to try and clear the air, which could then lead to negotiations re-opening.
It's also very useful to be able to contact agents before making an offer, to get an idea of interest and wages they might want.
“So we've been talking about it for a while and I know quite a lot of agents, and there are basically rules against players agreeing deals with clubs before the clubs have actually spoken," Said Jacobson
"Those are the rules in real life, yet you see it in the back page of the Mirror 'deal agreed on personal terms, now they've gotta sort out the fees'.
“When a player has an agent, that doesn't stop a club from phoning up the agent and going, 'Hey, we're interested in this player' because you're trying to find out whether there is interest there or not.
“But it's not just about the full demands, It's also when you're in that situation of a player not wanting to join you, well, you want to know what you need to do to be able to bring that player to your club.
“And there will still be players that will turn around and go, 'Look, I've just got no interest in joining you whatsoever', But it's important having those steps, not just for the players that you're looking to sign, but also for your own players as well.
"Being able to talk to the agent about what's gonna make the player happy, it's something that those of us who live in the real world, rather than the football world probably don't understand because we don't have agents going in and talking to our bosses on our behalf."
There's a really nice buzz when experiencing the newly-licensed competitions in FM23, including the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League. Just seeing the graphics and the matchday experience is really cool, and even the draws, which were previously very skip-able, are now essential viewing.
As we didn't have tons of time with the new game, we weren't able to comprehensively test the features that have a long-term aspect, particularly the dynamic manager timeline, supporter confidence and manager AI improvements, but from what we did see, they'll be welcome additions to FM23, and we'll make sure to look at these fully in our full FM23 review.
Supporter confidence in particular is a more significant addition than many may realise pre-release, as you will now not only be judged game-by-game by your board, but by your fans too, and sometimes their expectations for you are very difficult to balance!
Football Manager 2023 will be released on Tuesday, November 8, 2022. Anyone who pre-orders Football Manager 2023 on Steam, Epic Games and Microsoft Store will receive roughly two weeks early access prior to full release, plus a 20% discount.
