In a new interview, the Forza Motorsport team make it clear that the game’s new direction towards becoming a racing platform is not a choice to make it a live service game.
Dan Greenawalt, General Manager for Forza Motorsport, was the first to emphasize this choice. In a new interview with IGN, he said this:
“Our approach right now is not to make a games-as-a-service. This is a massive game, and it’s launching for a $70 price, and there is a premium add-on. This is a massive AAA launch, so it’s not actually becoming a, ‘Hey, launch small and build over time.’ It’s not a service game. This is a AAA game.”
Greenawalt explains that the team is instead focusing on the possibilities enabled by new technologies, to make this new Forza Motorsport the kind of game that you commit to in a long term.
To a certain degree, racing games, especially sim racers, already require a certain level of commitment for players to master them. However, not everyone who is into racing games is the kind of gaming whale who can afford the financial investment such a commitment requires, or has the time to play it as much. Games like iRacing are most notorious at this; with a set subscription gating access to the game.
Microsoft’s bet is that they can get casual gamers to be somewhat committed by enticing them to keep coming back again and again. They believe they can do this by leveraging their technologies.
Creative Director Chris Esaki explains in further detail:
“So when all of this new content comes into the game, it’s not just, ‘Oh, there’s just a bunch of cars and we don’t know what to do with ’em; have fun with them,’ [which is] kind of how we’ve released them in the past.
We have the opportunity now, with this more agile technology foundation that we have, to put a car into the game or put a track into the game and quickly put that across every surface area in the experience. So a car comes into the game and now it’s actually where it would be appropriate.
It’s in a new career mode event that wasn’t there before, on day one. Or a whole new event that didn’t exist before at all. So the same thing with tracks, and it just starts to shift and evolve this content so it always feels fresh every time there’s new content in the game.”
Still, Microsoft draws a line in the sand on what they don’t want to do with the game, that would make it closer to live service and existing racing games:
“We certainly don’t want to split the community up, especially multiplayer. So all of the tracks right now for the foreseeable future, they’re all coming to the game for free. So that’s going to be enjoyed by everyone.”
Forza Motorsport will be released on October 11, 2023, on Windows via Steam, and Xbox Series X|S. it will also be Day One Game Pass.
