Sports Interactive boss Miles Jacobson defends cancellation of Football Manager 25
Sports Interactive chief Miles Jacobson feels that it would have "damaged" the company to release Football Manager 25 - which was cancelled earlier this year after a string of issues during the making of the game.
Sports Interactive boss Miles Jacobson claims that releasing the cancelled Football Manager 25 would have "damaged" the developer.
The annual game was shelved in February after a series of issues in development but Jacobson felt that the choice to pull the plug was ultimately correct - despite the embarrassment it caused to the company.
He told BBC Newsbeat: "If we had released FM25 in the state that it was in, it wouldn't have been good value for money and it would have damaged us forever."
Fans claimed that communication about the cancellation wasn't very clear, but Jacobson pointed out that the stock market had to know before players.
He explained: "When it comes to cancelling, we have to let the stock market know first, so it kind of limits what we can do and we can't give hints towards it until the city are able to be told.
"It's the most expensive decision we've ever made."
The cancellation marked the first time that Sports Interactive had paused the game's release since its origins as Championship Manager in the early 1990s and Jacobson doesn't believe the 2025 instalment was fit for purpose.
He said: "We know that a lot of people are upset about it, but we did it for the right reasons.
"I wasn't happy with the quality of the game, and I wasn't prepared for people to be going out and spending their hard-earned money on something that wasn't good enough."
Football Manager 26 is set to be released later this year and Jacobson explained that the "biggest technical and visual advancement for a generation" will now be seen in the latest title.
The new game will also be the first in the long-running series to feature women's football, which had been initially scheduled for FM25.
Jacobson said: "(The cancellation) has had an impact on what we can put into FM26.
"We spoke about how we weren't going to have an email inbox, it was all going to be WhatsApp-based now - that system didn't work."
