Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 Studios has been heavily impacted by the layoffs that have been announced at Microsoft this week, impacting every global sector of the company. According to a former employee, these have resulted in the series being and their development team being greatly diminished.
Former Forza Motorsport Content Coordinator Fred Russell has said that the franchise’s team is “No more,” with the remaining members of the Turn 10 Studio, a Washington-based studio, now focusing on supporting the franchise’s spin-off series, Forza Horizon which is developed by British studio Playground Games, which has become more popular in recent years, hitting its Apex with Forza Horizon 5 which saw a mass influx of new players through Xbox Games Pass.
He stated via a post on Facebook:
Turn 10 Studios has shuttered the Forza Motorsport space, and the team is no more. A very sad day for one of the best car racing video games. I loved my time there
In response to a comment concerning the company’s future, he stated that “the studio is open to support the Horizon side,” with the game Motorsports side essentially scraped. Chris Harding, another former Turn 10 employee, suggested that 120 employees had been let go from the studio.
Forza Motorsport was launched in 2005 for Xbox and was meant as a direct competitor to Sony’s popular Gran Turismo series. The Forza Horizon series was later released in 2012, originally pitched as a new entry in the dormant Project Gotham Racing series, for which several developers at Playground Games had previously worked on. Horizon has an arcade approach to racing with an open world to explore, akin to popular racing games like Need for Speed: Underground, which might have helped the series become more approachable to a wider range of players.
Forza Motorsports’ last entry was set up of a reboot for the series, releasing in 2023 to a mixed reception. Xbox boss Phil Spencer had stated the next Forza game would release in 2026, with most expecting this to be the next Horizon game since the franchises alternate release schedule. Playground Games is also developing the reboot of Fable, the popular Xbox RPG, also set for release in 2026.
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