Football Manager 21 is coming to Xbox

Back on xbox after a 14 year hiatus. Release date still to be decided.

I play the PC and Switch versions, get hopelessly addicted, leave it for a month, and come back only to do it again.

This game is the ultimate RPG. Form your squad. Battle legends and evil bosses. Tactical gameplay. Heartbreak and love on the battlefield.

Might finally take that lower level Chinese squad to the top of the league and the world.

Who else is excited?

It's a cool option for those that don't have a PC, yet are desperate to play the game. But for me FM is the quintessential PC game. I'm constantly digging through community made content to make sure that the transfers are updated or that i can play in the lower leagues of Malta or Israel. I have found myself seeking out club-websites to get pictures of their players in the game and bust out the photoshop. I have gigabytes of playerfaces living on my computer. With console versions, or the stadia version, you kinda have to make do with the stock version SI creates.

But even when i think about the basic workflow of playing that game, there's a lot of digging through menu's, databases and selecting 100's of entry's for mass-scouting. stuff that probably doesn't work as flawlessly on a controller. There's already a Stadia version out there of FM 2020, and it's basically the exact same layout as the PC version but you get to use your analog stick to move a big arrow around. That feels like a bandage to make it sort of work, but not a team that has figured out a way to make their game work as good as possible on a controller. Unlike a game like Stellaris, where it's apparent that the team really sat down and changed the UI to make it work on a controller. Given that FM is a yearly franchise made by a somewhat small team, the amount of time they can spend on making an entirely different version is minimal. Especially when you realize that the current UI with the big sidebar is nearly 6 years old and they're still tweaking it with every new version.

It's no Championship Manager 01/02. I do remember playing FM the last time it was on consoles but, since then, my PC's been up to the task.

Do we know if the XSX has mouse and keyboard support?

Mouse & keyboard would have my attention. Editor would be a must.

@onemanarmyy: I don't have a pc and I've been playing last year's FM on stadia on my Chromebook and it's been great, literally the only thing that platform is good for lol

Still think it would be odd to see Vinny and Jeff trying to do a quick look for this on PC.

@shades846: It would be fun for FM fans, and perhaps a curio as the least visually-interesting game possible for a video quicklook. (Open question: IS there a more visually tedious game to do a video of?)

@custardarmy:

That's good to hear. Don't get me wrong, i think the more options there are to play FM, the better. Most people don't have a desktop after all. It's just that personally if i had the choice i would always opt for the PC version. I would feel limited if i couldn't tinker with the gamefiles with a game that has such a vibrant community around it. At the start of a new savegame, the first thing i do is go online and update all the community data files and make sure that i have the latest facepacks installed. My current game takes place in the lower leagues of Israel. That's just not possible if i don't have access to the gamefiles. I couldn't play with my local amateur club.

@petesix0: the FM devs also make a hockey game which has no 3d visual engine at all. Eastside Hockey Manager

@onemanarmyy: Brand new to me. I feel this has to be negated by a natural love of the sport that Alex and Bakalar could overcome. Even if they got Danny/miscBrit then FM is such a hard sell, especially as match mode on low is the same as EHM. But yeah, if we're talking about the process being Jeffe and Vinny across all takes, EHM might win.

@onemanarmyy: "Ranking of Sports" does not return an exact match on the first page of results. Hm.

Text-based commentary for life. Also, I wouldn't hold out hope for an editor on Xbox. Not when they still don't allow option files on Pro Evolution Soccer.

They've tried this before with limited success, (to my understanding anyway).

Still, other grand strategy games are making the jump to console successfully now. So perhaps it's time for the greatest series in that genre to attempt it again.

@onemanarmyy: fair enough as I'm coming back to a full FM game since like 2001 I'm not up to speed on all the community stuff and updates, sounds cool tho

I was excited but then read the press release calling it a "specifically tailored" version of the game, based upon the Touch series of Football Manager.

Sounds like a watered down version of the PC game unfortunately.

I hear decent things about Touch, to be fair. That's what's effectively on Switch at the moment.

It might be worth a look. Wonder how much it’ll cost ?

I’m sure they won’t charge as much for it as the fully featured PC version.

I know people with busier lives than me that swear by the Touch version being the perfect level of sim. I remember really enjoying the old console versions bc I could lie down while playing with a controller haha.

@nthnmllr: yeah its pretty much a continuation of the championship manager 3 games. Its basically what the switch version is and you can aslo turn on the streamloned version on pc

I'm really interested in how this does. Even the mainstream sports games have gotten pretty complex over the years just by virtue of having to add something new every year. FM Touch kind of feels like a classic Championship Manager/early Football Manager game and I think that could appeal to a lot of people for whom the full PC game has become a bit much. If they can take the Switch/iOS game and beef it up a little bit to take advantage of the extra power of the Xbox I think it could do really well