Robspierre

SI aren't catering to customers who can't afford high-end laptops by stripping back the game; they're skirting on the brink of the acceptable minimum for new features because they know people will continue to pay full price for the product irrespective of whether it improves year-on-year. They could invest tenfold resources into improving the game by the same factor, but that wouldn't even double their sales - it's the same process with EA and FIFA. FIFA fans complain of the same thing we're seeing with FM: zero meaningful improvements to new iterations, several aspects were actually better five/ten years ago, and multiple features have been inexplicably pulled over the same time frame. Minimise expenditure whilst maximising profit is the name of the game for any business; FM has perfected the foundation of the game in terms of ME and database realism & realised you don't need to keep adding brilliant new features on top of that to drive profit. Topping up your licences and adding minor cosmetic changes a la FIFA each year is enough to keep the money rolling in. This year is the most brazen example of this yet - a testing of the waters to see how little you can improve a product and repackage it as something different. I'm sure the addition of women's football in FM24 / FM25 will be enough to see the game continue to make vast sums of money under the guise of improvement.