In August, Sports Interactive released an announcement trailer for its upcoming Football Manager 2020 title. That trailer didn"t showcase any actual gameplay, and instead seemingly just focused on enticing players to gear up for a display of their management skills. Then, earlier this month, the video game developer unveiled new gameplay features for FM20.
Now, it has been revealed that the title will be arriving on Steam, iOS, and Android on November 19. However, release dates for its launch on Google Stadia and Nintendo Switch will be made known later.
Announce release date #FM20 📆 pic.twitter.com/O0Je4OD3zY
— Football Manager (@FootballManager) October 14, 2019
Just to clarify, the version that will be released solely for Android and iOS will be known as Football Manager 2020 Mobile. As one would expect, although the base gameplay experience would be about the same, the amount of content and playstyle flexibility available for players on the mobile version will be quite limited in comparison to the much more expansive PC-only version.
There"s also a Touch variant that is offered on all three platforms, PC, iOS, and Android. Sports Interactive notes that the latter and the former will not differ much in terms of their content, and instead, only in terms of their availability on different platforms. However, going by previous iterations in these series, Football Manager 2020 Touch should offer an experience closer to the PC-only version. For example, viewing matches with 3D player models hasn"t been possible in the past on Football Manager Mobile games.
Some Football Manager fans have expressed doubts over the significance of the additions being made in the latest edition. One of the only graphical features highlighted in the gameplay video mentioned above is "Pitch environment updates", something which may seem quite minor given that this is a separate entry to the series, demanding prices close to what one would expect from AAA titles in the current gaming era.
However, in games belonging to the tactical management/simulation genre, graphical improvements are often not the foremost of considerations, and players instead focus much more on how the gameplay has shaped up over the course of the past year. Either way, we should know more once the beta version becomes available around two weeks before the title"s launch on November 19.