Forza Takes A New Course

When Forza Horizon was introduced, Turn 10 Studios began a staggered two-year development cycle, resulting in a newForzagame every year, alternating betweenHorizonandMotorsporttitles. This strategy worked well for Turn 10 and publisher Microsoft, as it provided a successful anchor game that was practically guaranteed to be a hit.

Things weren't perfect, though. There were some heavy criticisms along the way. Many accused Forza Motorsport 5of being rushed due to the fact that it was an Xbox One launch title. There was also a lot of fan backlash over "loot box" style microtransactions inForza Motorsport 7. Turn 10 put a lot of work in to getForza 7to a place they felt aligned better with what the fans wanted. They vowed to not begin work on the nextMotorsportgame until they were satisfied.

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Then in March, during a livestream event, Dan Greenawalt announced the team was just beginning to enter pre-production on the nextForzagame and they would be taking an entirely new approach to development. He stated that instead the team would be involving the community much more via beta tests and discussion sessions. Hardcore fans would be much more connected to the creative process than ever before.

However, this announcement came just two months before E3, the biggest gaming expo in the world. It is basically the SEMA for video games. If pre-production was just starting in March, then there definitely wouldn't be a newForza Motorsportgame announced at E3. In its stead, a new LEGO Speed Champions expansion was announced forForza Horizon 4. Though the question remained: what does this new approach mean for the future of theForzafranchise?

After the Xbox E3 2019 presentation, I was afforded the opportunity to talk to Dan Greenawalt about that very subject. I wondered why the team decided to make such a drastic change to a process that worked so well for them in the past?

"Car culture is changing, game developing is changing, and gaming culture is changing" Dan responded. "We wanted to take a step back and readdress 'what's our core mission?' We're trying to shape the future of automotive entertainment. We believe that means building communities. Car communities and gaming communities."

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But how exactly would Turn 10 do that? "The team is looking at a customer-first, community building approach. That meant supporting 'Motorsport' longer than ever. We added a lot of features. We brought a lot of players in-house to do panels and discussions to understand what our players are looking for. Moving on to the next thing we do the 'Motorsport' team has brought that approach forward.

"That means bringing players in and building communities we can test with. Some over email, some over Skype, and of course some actually in-house playing code. So, we're in the concept phase right now but it's totally different. In many ways it reminds me of the originalForza Motorsportwhen we didn't really have a date we were pushing towards. We're trying to embrace a new style of development but also get into that wild innovation space we were known for many years ago."

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This led me to the inevitable question. With them just now beginning to enter this new concept phase and a new more powerful Xbox console (Project Scarlett) due to release by the holiday season of next year, does this mean that the nextForzagame is destined for Xbox Scarlett? Or will we see it released for the current generation of Xbox consoles (Xbox One S, Xbox One X)?

"Well, again, we don't have a date. It's a really different development process than we've done in the past. When we were working onForza Motorsport 5, we had a date. We were really looking at the launch of [the Xbox One]. But the difference between the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One launch is things like backwards compatibility, forwards compatibility, 'game pass,' 'xCloud,' and on PC those were not in the landscape back then.

"Today, we're looking at a much broader group of gamers across all these different devices and that's where we're going to build these communities from. So even on PC, there are incredibly high-end PCs on the market today; but we want to make sure we're servicing not only those high-end PC players but also PCs that normal people can play on as well through new, advanced options.

"We're also looking at accessibility. How players can customize the look of the game. Things like the [User Interface], the font, the background, subtitles, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and all of these different technologies to again bring players into our tribe, people who are going to love cars going forward. That means we are less hardware focused than ever before, but our [game] engine is extensible to the point where we can take incredibly high advantage of any piece of hardware that's in front of us.

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"As a creator, I'm very excited about 'Project Scarlett'. This is something our whole team has been on board with for a long time. It's an exciting piece of hardware and we're of course going to line up great experiences as a franchise as Xbox moves into that future. But the 'Motorsport' team itself is not focused squarely on any one date or any one piece of hardware. It's about broadening to a huge group of car lovers."

Whether you're satisfied with that response or not, you have to respect the man for being able to explain such a lofty goal for his team without managing to give anything away. Either way, I'm sure this will provide some high-octane speculation fuel for months to come.

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I've interviewed Dan many times over almost the last decade and while his Jedi powers are strong, I have learned to read between the lines a little. If I were to make a guess (pure speculation alert!), I would say that the nextForza Motorsportgame will not arrive before the next gen console launches. I also doubt that it will be a launch title for Project Scarlett.

Though in reality, we really don't know. It is the first time in a while that we haven't known anything, and I have to admit, it's pretty exciting.

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