Game release dates are too late.. what dou think about that?

[Pafnus]

Hello dear fm lover and developers..

 

As you know football maanger series releases  november usually.. i think it is really too much late date.. 

 

İt will be so nive hypetetic if new game release september.. what do you think about that?

[FrazT]

Many of the transfer markets do not close till 31/8 so a September release would not be possible due to coding and testing needs.

[themodelcitizen]

Yeah they just need to have it out in time for the UK Christmas shopping season really

[Draakon]

On 10/05/2023 at 01:47, FrazT said:

Many of the transfer markets do not close till 31/8 so a September release would not be possible due to coding and testing needs.

Interesting. If players are in the database it should be quite easy to implement August transfers into the game and it doesn't need a lot of coding and testing in my opinion.

Certainly not three months worth of testing. 

If the actual reason is to wait until the beginning of the new season and also take, matches played at the beginning of the campaign into account to tweak player attributes or some more data, then obviously it takes longer.

[Huey Lewis]

Beta is usually out mid to late October rather than November. 

4 hours ago, Draakon said:

Interesting. If players are in the database it should be quite easy to implement August transfers into the game and it doesn't need a lot of coding and testing in my opinion.

Certainly not three months worth of testing. 

If the actual reason is to wait until the beginning of the new season and also take, matches played at the beginning of the campaign into account to tweak player attributes or some more data, then obviously it takes longer.

If a window closes on the last day of August, not sure the start of November equates to three months. Was actually fifty days between the closure of the UK transfer window (albeit there's a chunk of European leagues who close between week and up to three weeks later) and the beta launch. 

[rusty217]

Completely agree. I'd really like it if it released in August!

It really annoys me when the first season deviates from real life. That can be an issue when the game releases in Nov. Stuff like Arsenal's fantastic start to the season or Chelsea's atrocious start aren't likely to be replicated in the game. It's even worse now, if I start a new game now there's basically no chance it will play out the same as IRL.

An August release however wouldn't be an issue in that regard. I'd be level with (or very soon ahead of) the real season, so it would already feel like my own football world and I wouldn't have to worry about it deviating from real life. It would make the 1st season actually enjoyable rather than having to use editors to buff/nerf teams as much as possible to copy IRL results and having to wait until the 2nd season to enjoy the game.

Oh, and in regard to the summer transfers, I'd actually really like a database that doesn't feature them. I typically start games in July so it wouldn't make sense for those transfers to have been done anyway. It would be nice to be able to do my own summer transfer window than to have all the players having already moved when the game starts. Can update the game with a post-transfer window for those that want it, but I don't.

Edited May 18, 2023 by rusty217

[DarJ]

1 hour ago, rusty217 said:

Completely agree. I'd really like it if it released in August!

what compromises will you be willing to accept if for example they decided to release FM24 3 months earlier than usual? 

[santy001]

Shortening a development period by 3 months is never really going to work. I believe it has been discussed before and that is the biggest barrier. 

[TheWizard65]

Not adjust. I would leave it that way, but I would like it if there will also be a summer patch with transfers.

[santy001]

From the perspective of the researcher side of things, I wouldn't be a big fan of having to sort data out during the summer months for a current FM update on one hand and also prepare the data for the next FM title at the same time. Appreciate it may not be the clearest of subjects to those outside the research team, but it feels like the logistics to pull it off would be a nightmare. 

[rusty217]

8 hours ago, DarJ said:

what compromises will you be willing to accept if for example they decided to release FM24 3 months earlier than usual? 

Any and all.

The only updates I really care about are competition rules and editor improvements. The editor is mostly ignored every year anyway, so there wouldn't even be a change there. The new UCL format came a year later than FM could have implemented it as well. So yeah, if there were literally no changes for FM24 for an August release it wouldn't bother me. I simply couldn't care less about the vast majority of new "features" FM has added in recent years. So if none get added this year, there's no real difference.

[DarJ]

13 hours ago, santy001 said:

Shortening a development period by 3 months is never really going to work

Im not suggesting they do that at all

11 hours ago, rusty217 said:

Any and all.

The only updates I really care about are competition rules and editor improvements. The editor is mostly ignored every year anyway, so there wouldn't even be a change there. The new UCL format came a year later than FM could have implemented it as well. So yeah, if there were literally no changes for FM24 for an August release it wouldn't bother me. I simply couldn't care less about the vast majority of new "features" FM has added in recent years. So if none get added this year, there's no real difference.

I was asking because it’s easy for us as consumers to say what we want without thinking about the logistics. If for whatever reason they decide to shorten their development cycle by 3 months then they would have had to make some compromises 

[kandersson]

Agreed. Of course most people are hyped and eager to play a new game at the start of the season especially at the end summer transfers window. Of course early september would be great though international break in october would also be nice. Even one month earlier (early october instead of early november) would already make a lot of difference imho.

[forameuss]

The development cycle argument gets glossed over, but it would be the main logistical barrier to doing this.  You lose three months likely, and that time has to come from somewhere for at least one edition of the game.  Do you cut that from development and actually present a product with no changes (because things always change, regardless of how much of a change people believe they are)?  Because I guarantee that for every one buyer that would be fine with that, there's a much larger group that wouldn't be.  Do you cut it from testing/QA?  Good luck with that.  Playing with fire if you miss something really key.  

And that's not going into how shifting the window is going to affect how SI themselves work.  That's not something we're going to have a window into.  Any issues will be by no means insurmountable, but is it worth a completely disastrous edition just to move that window?  Do the first months of release then become a big fight as to how much focus you give to the inevitable issues, or to bringing the database up to scratch?

I don't think there's anything wrong with the the way the cycle sits now. 

[XaW]

2 hours ago, forameuss said:

The development cycle argument gets glossed over, but it would be the main logistical barrier to doing this.  You lose three months likely, and that time has to come from somewhere for at least one edition of the game.  Do you cut that from development and actually present a product with no changes (because things always change, regardless of how much of a change people believe they are)?  Because I guarantee that for every one buyer that would be fine with that, there's a much larger group that wouldn't be.  Do you cut it from testing/QA?  Good luck with that.  Playing with fire if you miss something really key.  

And that's not going into how shifting the window is going to affect how SI themselves work.  That's not something we're going to have a window into.  Any issues will be by no means insurmountable, but is it worth a completely disastrous edition just to move that window?  Do the first months of release then become a big fight as to how much focus you give to the inevitable issues, or to bringing the database up to scratch?

I don't think there's anything wrong with the the way the cycle sits now. 

I'll also add the fact that the last few months before any software released is often the most hectic ones to make sure everything is tested and fixed and retested, and fixed and tested ad nauseam, and putting that in the summer time when many people are on holiday sounds like could be an issue, purely logistically.

Now, I don't know how SI do stuff, but since I do work in a development team in day job, we often have the longest period between releases over the summer, and very rarely release any versions between early June and late September, specifically for this reason.

[forameuss]

30 minutes ago, XaW said:

I'll also add the fact that the last few months before any software released is often the most hectic ones to make sure everything is tested and fixed and retested, and fixed and tested ad nauseam, and putting that in the summer time when many people are on holiday sounds like could be an issue, purely logistically.

Now, I don't know how SI do stuff, but since I do work in a development team in day job, we often have the longest period between releases over the summer, and very rarely release any versions between early June and late September, specifically for this reason.

For me it was always Christmas.  Working for a US Investment Bank that obviously had interests around Thanksgiving meant that change freezes often stayed in place from mid November up until early January when you could reliably expect everyone to be back in place, such was the terror that things would go wrong when people weren't around to react to it.  It was an absolute ballache.

[phd_angel]

If I were SI, I'd actually consider postponing launch to December, if it helped sales in the holiday season.

Personally, I wouldn't mind waiting a few weeks longer for a more polished and finalized game.

Edited May 20, 2023 by phd_angel

[rusty217]

On 20/05/2023 at 14:51, phd_angel said:

If I were SI, I'd actually consider postponing launch to December, if it helped sales in the holiday season.

Personally, I wouldn't mind waiting a few weeks longer for a more polished and finalized game.

Seems like that would actually cost them sales?

I mean, a November release gets you the high launch sales, and then you get an xmas boost a month later to add some extra sales. If you push it into December then you're having both the launch boost and xmas boost at the same time which probably lessens overall sales). It's pretty rare for games to release in December actually, and I assume this is one of the main reasons why. It's typically Sept, Oct or Nov releases, with December being mostly indie stuff, delayed games and sometimes DLC for a bigger game.

[phd_angel]

7 hours ago, rusty217 said:

Seems like that would actually cost them sales?

I mean, a November release gets you the high launch sales, and then you get an xmas boost a month later to add some extra sales. If you push it into December then you're having both the launch boost and xmas boost at the same time which probably lessens overall sales). It's pretty rare for games to release in December actually, and I assume this is one of the main reasons why. It's typically Sept, Oct or Nov releases, with December being mostly indie stuff, delayed games and sometimes DLC for a bigger game.

Great insights. Thanks.

[Garethjohn79]

Surely it's being released too early as it's not even a finished product until the following March. It gets released in November and spends another 5 months getting fixed and if anything is missed by then thats it. At full price at release wouldn't it be nice to have a finished product, rather than get it on discount the following summer after all/most of the fixes have been added?

[forameuss]

1 hour ago, Garethjohn79 said:

Surely it's being released too early as it's not even a finished product until the following March. It gets released in November and spends another 5 months getting fixed and if anything is missed by then thats it. At full price at release wouldn't it be nice to have a finished product, rather than get it on discount the following summer after all/most of the fixes have been added?

If you're waiting for a "finished product" then you may as well wind up the series.

[fc.cadoni]

Since each game developer has each own workflow and workload, it's not an easy thing to change direction from one year to another. Since it is software (hardware + software it is different kind of beast), will never be perfect to everyone. It is Ongoing Focus if we try to translate it with in-game mechanic. From a user point of view, now, I would preferred to see more often updates in UI/UX and database updates like it is now.

[Tig212]

On 18/05/2023 at 13:21, rusty217 said:

 

It really annoys me when the first season deviates from real life. That can be an issue when the game releases in Nov. Stuff like Arsenal's fantastic start to the season or Chelsea's atrocious start aren't likely to be replicated in the game. It's even worse now, if I start a new game now there's basically no chance it will play out the same as IRL.

 

If it is possible it would be nice to have real life results coded into the game every gameweek and the player is given the option to start at any gameweek (that has already been played) and takeover a team from that point on

In my opinion this allows for more interesting but irl scenarios

For example, you can choose to start at Middlesborough when they appointed Carrick (after gameweek 16) and see if you can replicate his performance

For licensing reasons it would probably only be possible in licensed leagues, but even a fraction of the leagues in FM having this would be nice.

 

[Garethjohn79]

13 hours ago, forameuss said:

If you're waiting for a "finished product" then you may as well wind up the series.

Why can't they keep the fixes from the last edition? The new releases are barely more than a database update anyway, but just tend to add more issues, the bigger the game gets the more issues.

Cant the developers set an edition for the future where they say by FM 2026 there'll be a massive overhaul of everything including graphics and start working on that edition, and the versions in-between just be updates(which they practically are) of players, squads etc.

The same daft scenarios get played out each version, look at ground improvements, we still get the same clubs rebuilding each edition like Middlesborough and Bolton Wanderers or Watford sharing with Bournemouth or vice versa yet it's not happened IRL since the 1990's. Grounds all looking the same at low levels regardless of their actual capacities most are fields with a stand in yet the game depicts them with huge terracing and stands that wouldn't be out of place in the championship.

You cannot tell from watching a game how good a player is other than looking at the stats and attributes, Messi looks the same as an amateur at Caersws.