The future of the Forza Motorsport franchise is up in the air after the Xbox Game Studios restructuring. Turn 10 Studios, the developers behind the sim racing series, are fully combining with Playground Games. This new merger results in the studio being rebranded to Playground Games Redmond. Not only does it affect the long-standing racing series, but it affects the very studio behind the core development team as well.
Turn 10 Studios merges into Playground Games as creator Dan Greenawalt retires
Dan Greenawalt, co-founder of Turn 10 and the developer behind Forza Motorsport, is retiring. He’s departing from his role after working at Microsoft for 27 years. Greenawalt will offer guidance to the new studio leadership during this transitional phase. This also signifies the end of an era for the sim aspect of the franchise.
The former Turn 10 team will now assist Playground Games in other projects. This will be for the Forza Horizon series and the upcoming Fable RPG. The two studios merging was announced back in September from Microsoft. This new restructuring puts the focus off of the mainline sim games.
It's unclear if we will be seeing another true Forza Motorsport game at this point. The 2023 release could be the last in the long-standing franchise. This uncertainty is there due to the studio restructuring and the departure of its creator. We’re in the waiting phase to see if the sim series will live on with this new structure.
Source: NotebookCheck
The sim era is dead. Playground focuses on arcade fun. Turn 10 becomes support staff.
Does the internal memo specify if the new redmond studio retains the core physics engine or if they are porting Playground’s tech to sim racing? The architecture shift is the real story here.
No mention of a new engine. They are likely adapting the Horizon tech stack for the next Motorsport entry. It will be less technical and more visual.
27 years is a long time to spend on one franchise 💀 greenawalt is basically a legend at this point.