When Microsoft released its intuitive motion camera, the Xbox Kinect, plenty of people assumed that the company pushed the technology on all of its first-party studios. In order for the motion device to be successful, some of the biggest games needed to integrate its unique functionality in some form or another. However, Forza developer Turn 10 has come out to debunk that theory, claiming that its bosses have never forced them to include any particular features in its racing games.
"We're never mandated and I think that's the secret. I think most people think teams are mandated," creative director Dan Greenawalt said in an interview with OXM. "We aren't told, we're asked. [People say to us] 'Please, please no-one is going to showcase this stuff like first-party will – figure it out because we don't know how we're going to showcase it.’”
Microsoft seems to trust the developers it labels as first-party studios, which is important if they wish to keep the companies in their software stable.
"We're the creative body. We're the creative organization. So we're not mandated to support Kinect, for example,” he continued. “We were one of the first games to support Kinect for the core, we were asked: 'Hey, here's this hardware, nobody's seen it yet, we're going to show it to you guys first, what would you do, how would you use it?' And we break off creative teams to start thinking about it. So that's really the process behind this."
Hopefully this philosophy continues with the Xbox One when Forza 5 races onto the next-generation platform later this year.
