Football Manager 26’s launch hasn’t exactly been smooth. On PC alone, the game has suffered from an annoying new UI that fans are already attempting to fix, as well as the usual bugs and crashes that have caused the game to be the lowest-rated mainline entry of the modern era. And that was before the console version launch.
While the PC game now sits at a ‘Mostly Negative’ review from users on Steam at the time of writing, the console version is also being blasted for being one of the buggiest releases in modern gaming. As the game didn’t have an Advanced Access period like on PC and Mac fans are now experiencing a truly busted Football Manager 26 for the first time with gamers on Xbox are reporting single-figure frame-rates, essentially rendering the game unplayable.
A quick look at some of the subreddit communities reveals pretty scathing impressions of Fm26’s console outing, with comments asking: “How do these games get certified for consoles and launch in such terrible states? Do they not have quality control for the store?”
A FM26 console patch thread has started
Complaints about the console version are already starting to mount up on the official Sports Interactive forum, with some calling for an immediate patch to stop them from refunding. Others appear to have given up already, with one writing: “Played PS5 FM26 for about two hours last night and then switched back to FM24.” They added: “I’m sure it will get better and I’m not going to get a refund but until there is a patch to improve the UX SI and Sega can consider it pity revenue.”
The Xbox port currently leads the PS5 in terms of reported issues at the time of writing, with Navigation and UI bugs top of the list. So, what kind of issues are being raised? Across both consoles navigational and menu issues seem to be most prevalent. Some are reporting issues with Radial Menu, dropdowns that aren’t ‘dropping down’ and functionality issues around the console’s thumbstick ‘clicker’ not working as intended.
Even with the game’s busted controller options, players using a USB mouse and keyboard on console are also facing issues. One user wrote: “Playing with Mouse and Keyboard on Xbox Series S. If u want to scroll down with the mouse wheel, it goes straight down to the bottom of a list and if u want to scroll up it goes to the absolute top. So the only way to scroll is to manually scroll with the bar on the side which is really annoying and not really accurate as bigger the list is.”
Elsewhere, issues with the Match Engine are being reported, including a bug where no stats are shown at halftime. Other more minor bugs, are also being flagged, such as NewGen player faces not showing up. “Started a save when game out… seen my youth had no faces so started another one. Seen the same issue. Really annoying I hope this is a easy fix…” Text size has also been flagged by a number of players, with some saying that despite the ability to change it, the font is still far too small when playing on a TV. “Font is WAY too small. I play on TV that is not gigantic, I set the Larger font and still cannot read the text normally,” wrote one FM player.
The good news is that SI is aware of the issues, and has created a tracker to gather as much information as possible, to inform future hotfixes and patches. Many of these will likely be addressed in a patch, which we’d anticipate would be imminent.
So, should FM 26 have been delayed? No, according to our expert
“This is probably controversial, but I don’t think FM26 should have been delayed,” says Will Reid, who runs OutofcontextFootballManager on X, Formerly Twitter. “It’s easy to say now after the negative reception to this game, but people are forgetting what the mood was like before FM26 was announced. People were saying if they didn’t release a game the franchise was finished. They simply had to release a game. They were really stuck between a rock and a hard place (mainly caused by themselves).”
He continued: “There’s also a primary selfish reason for not wanting the game to be delayed. I’m enjoying myself loads with FM26, despite it’s various problems. They’ve already released many quality of life features which have made it easier to enjoy. But honestly, I’m just happy to be sinking my teeth into a new game. I had serious FM24 fatigue.”
Final thoughts
Since launch, the team at SI have deployed numerous hotfixes, so we’re confident a lot of these issues will be fixed incredibly soon. The move to Unity and overhaul of the much-loved UI was a risk that may still pay off if they can address these teething issue as quickly as possible.
SI boss Miles Jacobson was vocal ahead of the launch that players can’t expect the level of refinement with the brand new UI compared to one that was tweaked and improved over the past 20 years. “I think we’ve been pretty clear with everyone that it is that, that you can’t expect 20 years worth of quality of life features from a UI to be there in a brand new UI that no one has ever used before,” Jacobson explained to YouTube Channel FM.Zweierkette and Jonukas ahead of the launch.
“It’s going to take time for those things to come back. But for a first version of something, it’s an incredibly feature-rich first version that includes things that are way better than what we’ve had in this series before.”
Really, the state of the Xbox and PlayStation versions of Football Manager 26 prove that Advanced Access and betas can not only be for PC anymore. While the game is available to trial on Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation players have been hit by an atrocious release that could’ve been avoided with a public beta.
