News about Forza Motorsport | launch announcements

FORZA MOTORSPORT NEWS THREAD


I’ll update this thread with news articles and videos over the course of Forza Motorsport’s development and release as a history and index.

CHRONOLOGY / MILESTONES

2019

  • Mar: First mention of the unnamed project in development

2020

  • Jul: First gameplay trailer, name and logo revealed during #XboxGamesShowcase
  • Nov: A tweet saying that studio game testing is going well

2021

  • Apr: Hands-on testing for ForzaFeedback panel members coming soon
  • May: First closed playtest; fuel and tire pitting options confirmed, 8x more contact points
  • Sep: Info update on Forza Monthly livestream
  • Dec: Info update on Forza Monthly livestream

2022

  • Jun: First trailer; new track reveals; Spring 2023 release date announced
  • Sep: In full Production phase

2023

  • Jan: Official trailer and blog with shown cars list
  • May: Cover Cars reveal and June info
  • Jun: Builders Cup
  • Aug: Multiplayer, PC Specs, car and track reveals
  • Sep: Initial gameplay video


FIRST MENTION: MARCH 2019

Dan Greenawalt was a guest on the March edition of #ForzaMonthly, discussing both recent efforts by the franchise to communicate with the community about upcoming features in Forza Motorsport 7, as well as some big news:

“The weight of our team is shifting over to our next project.”

The timestamp link begins with Chris Esaki and Brian Ekberg talking about community interaction. Dan’s comments on the next project begin at 1:43:00

"What we’re saying very specifically is that Forza Motorsport 7 has had a strong amount of support from the team, and we’re going to be shifting our weight. So there’s still updates to come: you heard about Forza Race Regulations, and we’re going to be coming out with a private and then public beta and then rolling that out; you know, we’re not done with esports, that’s an exciting part to us as well so we’re going to be doing updates on that in the future. And of course we’re going to be doing other updates to the game. But the weight of the team is shifting over to our next project. So we’re getting into that concept phase.

Now in the past, that concept phase would be kind of subterranean. We’d kind of do it with ourselves, we’d work with our dev partners, and we’d bounce our concepts off ourselves. But we’re going to be doing it differently this time. We want to do it in public. We want to do it with our fans. Does that mean early rollouts? I don’t know. And that’s really what it comes down to: I don’t know.

But the big news is the team is transitioning its weight. We’re moving our weight over to this new project we’re working on and we’re doing it in a new way. We can listen to the team, open conduit, we want our players to go to Discord, get involved with us, to really be part of this process with us, to make their voice heard. And we, together, will shape the future of automotive entertainment."

Chris Esaki added:
I think the best way to think about, and how I think about, all the work that’s going on now with Forza Motorsport 7 is that we have an eye to the future now. I talked a little bit about how Forza Race Regulations really are fundamental to how we think about the next iteration. We are pouring so much energy into making sure that we have this rock solid foundation around Motorsport. A lot of that has to do with online behaviors and play, rule sets and that sort of thing. So just to be clear about that, I view that as not just working on Motorsport 7 but working on future investment. That work is future investment for us. So I talked about the physics roadmap we have, I talked about the AI roadmap on previous streams… we have years - literally years of work here around so many different efforts and that’s all future look. That’s all about taking what we have today and how do those investments directly impact our next experience. So that’s how I think about it.

You’ll still see so many things happening within FM7 because they will directly help us on the next product. So we’re not just building off in some secret cave and all of a sudden we unveil at E3 and everyone’s like ‘oh by the way get it in a couple months,’ and then people are excited about it but then they’re like ‘hey wait, this isn’t what I was thinking it was going to be and my expectations are this or that.’ But tow because we’re changing everything about how we do this, FM7 is going to continue, that work is going to continue. And we’re going to continue to listen to our fans, and that Discord channel is where it’s all going to happen, or where we hope that most of it is going to happen. But this is also where the team is going to be looking for the inspiration and focus for the next version as well.

Dan continued:
I think it’s important to mention… we work in game development. What I love is that we can have an authentic discussion with the community whether you work in game development or not, maybe it’s on Forza Fridays, maybe it’s here, we can go deep and we can have discussions. I love that this listening to your fans, it’s in all things in what we’re doing. We want to be more reactive. Part of being more reactive is having better tools for how we can actually launch high quality features, and who we launch them to. So sub-communities; and that’s what’s great about Discord and other ways we communicate with people - we can create sub groups. We’re doing Skype interviews with some of our fans, we’ve had panel interviews with pro drivers, and other things, to get feedback and get them invested in what we’re doing. That’s what we’re going to continue to do.

I mentioned tools. We have part of the team that actually makes tools for the other part of the team. And those are customers, those are fans of our game. And so shifting everything over to be fan first is not just kind of an idea right now, it’s something we are pushing through every aspect of the team; how it’s organized, how it works, how it talks. And as I said, I don’t know how this is going to go. All I know is we’re going to take this journey together. And we’re going to be open, we’re going to be honest, and find the right way to have this discussion with the fans at multiple levels and together we’ll do something cool.

The new Forza Discord is located here:
www.aka.ms/ForzaDiscord

Feedback can also be submitted to the developers at the Forza Support site:
https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/requests/new

Look for more Forza news in the future from #ForzaMonthly livestreams on Redirecting..., Twitch, and YouTube, as well as announcement articles at News - Forza and on the Forza Hub.

9 Likes

Why is this hidden way down here in “General Xbox Gaming”?

If you want community engagement… its important this goes to the TOP under a new “Next Motorsport” Forum or atleast the existing Motorsport Forum.

That’s where Motorsport players are most likely to find and contribute…

6 Likes

Agreed. And after reading that, all I took away is that weight is definitely being shifted and they’ve started yet another way to widen the communication gap with another place for people to go to discuss things.

So is FM7 going to be almost a beta for the next game? Are new features going to be treated the same as the Experimental Drag feature that has been stagnant for over 6 months now?!

1 Like

Announced on the April 2019 edition of Forza Monthly, the May livestream will be on May 7 and will include “the first details” of this next Forza project. Here’s the moment at the end of today’s livestream:

#Forza Monthly May 2019 livestream: The “Concept” Phase

The May 7th Forza Monthly livestream offered an update on this project, providing some insight on the concept phase of development and how the process differs this time compared to previous Forza projects. The discussion begins at the 53 minute mark in the YouTube replay.

On the couch:

  • Brian Ekberg - Community Manager
  • Chris Esaki - Creative Director
  • Scott Lee - Art Director

Brian:
Back in March, Dan Greenawalt - Creative Director for Turn 10 - was sitting right beside me and he was talking about the future of Forza. One of the things he mentioned was the fact that the Motorsport team at Turn 10 is shifting its resources to the next project. I know there’s a ton of community interest about that. What we’re going to talk about today with Chris and Scott is the concept phase at Turn 10; that process of concept. I’m really pleased to be joined by Scott Lee and Chris Esaki. … Chris, in your mind, what is “concept” and what does that mean for the team?

Chris:
Turn 10 has a specific process around concept, something that has gone all the way back to the original Forza Motorsport. Something that has been developed and honed over the years. The Horizon process, as part of Turn 10’s family, has been a part of this process as well. The concept phase is a little been different than other concept phases that I know, that Scott and I have been involved with over the years. It’s a Turn 10 thing. Part of that process is boiling the oceans around what we’re trying to think about doing in the future, it’s looking at all sorts of data, it’s talking with community, and coming up with this vision we call “Big Ideas.” Big Ideas are these houses for all these features that we want to do, but it gives it more meaning, it gives it more bite, it gives it more weight to organize these things into these large structures of ‘oh, it’s this huge thing now because they’re all housed in this one bigger idea.’ So that’s part of the concept phase. It’s part solidifying kind of a vision about where we’re going, and then having this artifact around big ideas that houses all the features and the vision about where we’re going.

Scott:
I think the biggest difference this go is the fact that we’re talking about it in public. This is unprecedented. I’ve been with a lot of different companies in the industry for a very long time, and never, ever, have we engaged the community this early in the process of developing a game. It’s strange but great. I think we want to take this as an opportunity to really make use out of it. How can we make our game better, how can we make our early concepts much more what the community wants via the fact that we’ve exposed it. So I feel like there’s stuff that we haven’t touched on, that I’d love for us to engage the community on. I think it’s a real advantage for us; you know, we might be setting a trend. Who knows, other game companies might begin doing this as well.

For me personally, part of the concept process is you getting to make that dream game you’ve always wanted to make. You know, making the last game better than it was. It’s all these things, but a big part of it really is selling it to our team. It’s a really large team. It’s growing. We’re making a lot of changes in the infrastructure and the team and I think getting everybody on board, getting everybody so excited, and getting everybody to ‘own’ the game is the secret to how we make great games. Which is a big part of the pitch process.

Brian:
You come from the art side, you come from the design side - this early in the process how are those teams working together?

Chris:
Very closely at this point. Just taking a step back, we’ve been on this journey for so long, I know we’ve been talking about this next new thing for a couple of years. Since [Scott] started, since I started, we’ve been talking about things we’ve been wanting to do with the franchise. Going back to FM1 even, I think one of the great things is this whole new process hasn’t been just “hey what game do you want to make? Hey this is the game that I want.” Because that’s kind of how we approached it in a lot of ways in the past. This is about going on this journey with everyone in the communities that we have grown over time.

We’ve been spending hundreds and hundreds of hours watching our players on Twitch and Mixer, hearing what they have to say on our forums, on Twitter, and other types of social media, and having these player interviews. We have a new process right now where we’re talking directly to the community, asking what motivates them to play the game, what are things that motivates them to play other games. But also we’ve had the ability to just ask ourselves these questions about “What was your favorite Forza and why? What were the things that came out of that? What were the best moments that you had in a Forza game? Why was that?” And just taking those moments in time that made the franchise special for people and we’re just trying to make that all work. That’s part of this new vision process.

Scott:
Agreed. And you know, when people think about what we might be thinking about in concept, people might think “oh my god they’re just going to rip everything apart and reinvent,” and a lot of it is exactly what Chris said. It’s about making things a lot better. Fundamentally we are creators and we’re never happy with what we make. And just like the community, I think when the community goes “hey, this could be better. We’d like this.” It’s like it’s never a surprise for us. It is everything we wanted to. Maybe it was running out of time, maybe it was we didn’t have the resources. Whatever the circumstance was. And I feel like we have a bit of a unique opportunity right now to to really focus what we want to do and address the right things at the right time.

I’m certain that this is going to make our game a lot better and our concept a lot better than it’s ever been. It used to be done behind closed doors. It was always nerve wracking. We’d come up with something - this was the old days of development - three years later we’d go, “Hope you like it!” right? And things change, trends change, people’s tastes in your own game changes, and you have very little ability to adapt to this stuff. I feel like us creating this new process, where I want to talk about some of the graphical innovations we want to do, I want to talk about game cameras. I want to talk about all these things that I want better too as a player. For us to get some feedback along the way and mold this? I think this is a real opportunity for us, not just the community.

Chris:
One of the things we’ve been talking about is how we’re going to change our entire structure of the team and the process of building the game via all this stuff we’ve been trying to pull in via either community feedback or player feedback. So one of the things I’d love to see is a deeper integration with our players actually in our development team. So it’s something we’ve been discussing about how we actually bring people in and sit them down in the team and actually have them working on a development structure in one of our what we call Feature Teams. And co-developing what works for them, and and helping them see it. So we actually have this immediate response from our player base from is this working to “how does this help me, how does that not help me.” So instead of holding this close to our vest and three years later going “what do you think?” this is an immediate response of “yes this is working” so we’re constantly moving things in the direction toward where everyone understands this is the right thing to do for our players.

Scott:
You know, all this stuff makes absolute sense, doesn’t it. You go, “Okay, why didn’t you do this before?” Well, you know, infrastructure wise, I think we had some difficulty with regard to being able to iterate on our game. So we’re investing very heavily on building a team that’s bigger, better than it was before. We are building a lot of framework, technically - in our engine, in our pipelines - so that we’re able to create and then recreate without having to throw everything away.

It is a big investment. I gotta say, kudos to the leadership of the studio. Shout out to the bosses here. Honestly, they’ve been 100% on board with these massive changes that we’re doing infrastructure wise, both to the team and to our pipelines. It’s a big investment. And they’re hedging their bets on us being able to create under that framework and then being able to actually take feedback meaningfully and do something about it. This is probably the biggest change that we’ve ever had in the studio.

Brian:
Something you said earlier Chris is the fact that just yesterday you were pitching the big ideas to the studio. So we’re right in the middle of this process right now. And there’s that aspect of we want the community with us but we want the whole team with along with us. That feels different to me.

Chris:
It’s certainly different. I know the feedback we’ve gotten over the last couple months about this process, it’s both inspiring and it’s just something that is bringing a ton of energy and momentum.
But at the same time there’s a lot of hesitancy. It’s tough, right? We have over the years built this thing, this muscle memory, this pattern of how we build the game. And we’re just doing it completely different. And that’s kind of scary.

Scott:
It’s scary, it’s getting real, and we’re getting real questions from our team. And honestly I can be more happier about it. Getting the tough questions as to why are we doing this, how are we doing this, and all this stuff, is what we need. You know, we need to get off our seats and start doing this. I talked a little bit about adding talent to the studio. Right now our team is bigger than it’s ever been in our history. And again we’ve gotten a lot of support from the studio to build the kind of team that we need to make this ambitious project. And I’m going to do some name dropping. Just on my art team alone we have veterans and leads from Grand Theft Auto V, Read Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed, Madden, Battlefront 2… You can imagine what they bring with them. And it’s not just their technical expertise, but they have, you know, more efficient work flows, they’ve done this before. They hated doing it this way and they’d like to fix it, and they’re bringing great practices with them, they’re bringing their creativity with them.

And they’re bringing their very strong opinions as Forza fans with them. Which I love. I came in to the studio a couple years ago as a fan of the game, never having worked on a racing game. But knowing what I really really wanted from the game. And I feel like we need that. Our development process is kind of coming from a fan’s perspective as well, which is I think a really cool thing.

Chris:
Scott’s built this amazing group of ultra-talented guys. One of the things you brought up - pitching the team, bringing them along with the big ideas - even just yesterday. One of the reasons why I know we’re doing the right thing and we’re on the right path here is that the features and big ideas that we’ve been talking about are the things directly that the players have been asking for. Full stop. And after talking to a lot of people I got a bunch of responses over email, and text and whatnot after we ran the studio through the pitch, a lot of the themes were “I’ve been wanting this feature since FM1, FM2 or 3,” fill in the blank. “I wanted the game to do this for the longest time.” “I joined Turn 10 because I wanted the game to be like that.”

So I’m just super super pumped about that. And I know that talking to all the community and our players and know what they value and what they want from the franchise. And we know that because we’ve been talking to them, here, and other places. I know - I know we’re on the right track. I know we’re building the right way.

Scott:
I’m excited too. The other thing I’m kind of excited about is having this kind of rare opportunity to expose some of these things along the way. Obviously we don’t want to give everything away. But I am obsessed with making the base a lot better than it ever was. Again, we’re never happy with what we do; we want to make it better. And I’m purely talking about the feeling of driving inside the vehicle. All the things that happen: your cameras, how your driver moves, how the car behaves. All these things are so fundamental to our game. And we don’t want to ship the same thing over and over. It has to make generation leaps in terms of technology, in terms of how we want it to feel and sound and all that stuff.

We’re formulating a way of to expose some of these things, how we’re doing things to make it more realistic and all that stuff, along the way. So in the coming months I’d love to bring out some of my crew and go through of the really interesting processes that we’re using right now. Some real bleeding edge technical things, you know, ripped from the movie industry and stuff like that, to bring the thrill of real life racing to the game.

Brian:
I know I speak for the audience when I ask the question: “When are we going to see something? When are we going to see some information about the next project?” I’ll ask it a different way: What is for you guys coming out of concept, what is the ideal result of concept? What’s the best case scenario for concept going into next steps?

Chris:
I think I speak for both of us when I say it’s making sure we get funded! One of the biggest things for us, and truthfully this is a big deal: this pitch was entirely about the player experience. Normally we might talk about how we might do some technological thing in the game, how we might leverage some type of new player experience so we can deliver things at a better scale. And there’s a lot of that in the initial pitch for the next experience that we’re normally building. This time we didn’t have any of that. It was all just about the player experience. It’s all about the experience of the game we want to build. That’s a huge deal. For us I think the biggest thing was to make sure that that was landed. That we have this player-first experience led thing we built out. That this is what we want to make. So that was the first thing.

The second thing was making sure that everyone around us - the team, the entire studio, all the way top to bottom - was like, yes, this is awesome, we’re going to make this thing, we’re all in. So I think we’re getting to that place now. And I think the big artifact that comes out of that is “Here’s the feature set. Here’s the big ideas, and here’s the things we’re going to be building over time.” And that’s the game.

Scott:
You know, game development is very technical and it takes a lot of work and a lot of people. And often you find you collect a bunch of features and things that you need to do, graphical things, things like this. And you kind of corral them and it becomes something. And I gotta tell ya, in my experience, you don’t make special things that way. And I think the approach we’re taking is really… not caring about these things so much. Yes, we’re in the business of making great looking cars, they need to look better. Yes we’re in the business of doing all these things. But really coming from a player standpoint. How does it feel to do this? Is this fun? These are the questions. Real high level, basic questions we’re asking ourselves. And it has to pass that part of the test or otherwise it doesn’t become part of the pitch.

And then things fall in place. Yes - because of this, because this is our pillar, we’re going to need A, B, and C. And I think this is the approach that is really going to sell something to our team that is a vision we don’t have to explain; I believe it and I know what it takes. I know we’re a little hand-wavy right now, but really it’s a fundamentally different approach from how things were done in the past.

I’m just excited to be able to talk about the work this early. Honestly I can’t wait to get some feedback on some of the processes. I’d love for people to see under the hood and see how we make games too. I’m super excited about sharing that stuff with the community.

IGN’s Luke Reilly interviews Dan Greenawalt:

No Forza Motorsport This Year as Turn 10 Takes Time to Innovate and Reinvigorate – E3 2019
Updated: 9 Jun 2019 5:21 pm
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/09/no-forza-motorsport-this-year-as-turn-10-takes-time-to-innovate-and-reinvigorate-a-e3-2019

(select quotes)

2 Likes

“In the last five years in particular it’s become almost acutely clear to me that we’ve really transitioned from a time where we were all about just making products, to a time where we’re trying to build community,”

“our ultimate goal is to shape the future of automotive entertainment. And the way we’re going to do that is by building communities of gamers and people who love cars and bring people together in new ways”.

“The car industry is looking at a new generation of car buyers and are really worried about how to get them excited about cars,” he says. “Meanwhile there’s esports and streaming; gaming culture is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We sit right in the middle of there. I think we hold the key to creating the new, passionate car lover in this younger generation, but we’re not going to do it by telling them how to think or trying to get them to feel the same way about cars that we do. We have to create new experiences to get them excited about cars in this new environment, where streaming is just a way of socialising.”

“I would say that, to date, our esports looks a lot like traditional racing, but to create something entirely new for a new audience means taking advantage of what we can do in the digital space,” he explains. “There are things we can do in the digital world that can’t be done in the real world. As long as we’re thinking about how we replicate a real world style of race, and we limit ourselves to that, we won’t invent something that breaks beyond it”.

“Our hope is to have enough familiarity and enough authenticity that car people just love it, while meanwhile approaching a new player type that really didn’t understand racing – they didn’t grow up with cars – and now they start thinking about it in a different way. Because the sports game analogy is a perfect one. Like, Rocket League is a sports game, right? There are sports games that mirror a real world sport, and there are sports games that are actually a new type of sport’.

“This isn’t just about making great experiences – though we will fail if we don’t – it’s also about really making a community that can last. Last for another decade.”

Dan Greenawalt is master at saying a lot without saying much (giving away much). I took a few comments out relevant to next Motorsport to discuss, and I gotta say it’s got me a bit worried coming from a “Veteran Players” perspective. Dan hints at a direction that seems opposed to the direction I (and many others) was hoping for. More on that in link below;

https://forums.forza.net/turn10_postst149627_A-Letter-to-Turn10---Suggestions-for-future-of-Motorsport.aspx

Now I could be taking this the wrong way because it’s very much open to interpretation. You have to read between the lines, but points I took for the IGN interview are;

  • Taking about the direction for the next 10+ yrs not just the Next Motorsport title.
  • Rather than refining the current model into something that better replicates Real life Motorsport they may be abandoning that model for something “beyond” traditional racing.
  • Focus on younger generation that apparently aren’t interested in traditional Motorsport and cars, flip side of that ofcourse is leaving the older generation and veteran players behind.
  • Focus on E-sports, streaming, social and online content. Thus moving away from single player career focus despite never really perfecting (not even close) that immersive Motorsport career experience that I really hoped they would finally achieve with FM8.
  • Being Innovative and creating something only possible in the digital space. Rocket League was mentioned, but not traditional competitors like GT or Project Cars.

Idk, I feel so invested in Motorsport and I like to think that that loyalty will be rewarded. But in reality, their a business, and I’m probably just getting a little too old for their target demographic (eg. under 25’s). I think it might be time soon to leave Xbox behind.

1 Like

On Discord it’s not easy to elaborate.

I think most people who watch and enjoy motorsport aren’t realizing that motorsport is getting duller by the year. IMO this decade has been the worst ever for anything motorsport-related. F1 struggles to transition to the modern age, WEC was a catastrophic failure, IndyCar won’t ever regain its luster from the mid-1990s, the GT endurance championships are getting even more niche and with far less interesting cars than they had in the 2000s, DTM is almost at spec-level and Super GT was similarly downgraded, NASCAR has no appeal beyond US borders (basically the NFL of racing), and the IMSA series, while healthy, cannot regain the magic ALMS or the old Camel IMSA GT used to have.

Another issue with motorsport is that, due to stringent emission regulations, development is shifting towards electric powertrains, which means most manufacturers right now are interested in Formula E. But the Formula E series itself is not in a good position. How to attract viewership when the electric single-seaters are anything but spectacular? The premier electric racing series features cars slower than an F3 around the track and the truth is, the series itself is merely a technical exercise in preparation for when F1 itself moves to electric.

In this setting, Turn 10’s main product is called “Forza Motorsport”.

If I could have a chat or something with Dan, I’d put forward the following idea. Why does Forza Motorsport need to attract “more” people? Why does it need to be at the forefront of any conversation regarding the Xbox and racing games? It does need to, but in its own niche, which is that of racing simulators. You really don’t see Porsche changing the formula of their GT3 RS to appeal to a bigger demographic: they have the Carrera for that. Better yet, they have the Cayenne and the Macan! The latter products bring in the needed income for the engineers to go wild with the more expensive ones.

My opinion is that Forza Motorsport does not need a “broad demographic”. That’s the task of Forza Horizon. FH is Forza’s Cayenne. All Forza Motorsport needs, is to be held in high regard… within its genre. FM7 was universally better received than Gran Turismo Sport by the mass media and won racing GOTY that year against Project CARS 2, F1 2017 and the aforementioned Gran Turismo. However, within the racing sim community, Gran Turismo Sport managed to sway quite a few outlets away from Forza Motorsport due to its bigger focus on the simulation aspect of the game, despite its utter lack of content and features next to Forza Motorsport (I’m sorry but I can’t take seriously a sim without Spa in its roster).

We’ve seen how Turn 10 took this at heart when Chris Esaki came out and said they needed to do a better job at making this game a true Motorsport experience. And Turn 10 needs praise for the strides they took with FM7 after launch. A revision of the FFB system is something I would never have expected from Forza Motorsport years before, but they did it. And they’re hard at work with the FRR.

Even amid this bleak scenario for real-life motorsport series, there’s definitely much going on with motorsport in gaming. Even Codemasters has decided to revive GRID to take a slice of the pie. Kunos is betting on their official Blancpain GT game. PD will continue their GaaS approach with Gran Turismo Sport. SMS is talking about a Project CARS 3. These are the games Forza Motorsport needs to tackle and take down. And, even if they have a combined public of mere hundreds of thousands among billions of potential gamers, that’s perfectly ok. Because all Forza Motorsport requires, is to be the best at what it is, not at what’s popular. As I said, winning popularity contests and bringing in the cash is up to Forza Horizon.

FM is no longer the type of game that sells, since FH has the casual public covered now. It is the type of game that makes people look at Xbox as a whole and witness its technical excellence.

6 Likes

Bravo NightDriver7800 very well said.

i hope Dan and Turn10 reads this and takes it seriously.

I absolutely agree. Ever since they introduced horizon, I’ve been waiting for motorsport to transition into a more proper motorsport game. Don’t need to make it a full-on sim, but maybe incorporate some more motorsport features into it. Maybe even heavily include IMSA. Whatever happened to that partnership?

I have faith that Turn 10 are on the right track for the next motorsport game, but this post covered exactly what they should ideally do for the future.

Forza Monthly - June 10 from E3

REPLAY LINKS

The first hour featured behind the scenes details about LEGO and FH4. Timestamps for the Forza Motorsport content:
1hr02 - Brian Ekberg talks to Jen Yi - Director of eSports at Turn 10 - about the history of ForzaRC, its recent testing with teams, the use of Forza Race Regulations in adjudication, and longterm plans.
1hr14 - Dan Greenawalt talks about FM3 and FM1
1hr19 - Building communities
1hr25 - FRR and Rapid Iteration Testing^
1hr30 - “We currently do not have a timeline” or date for the next game
1hr32 - aka.ms/ForzaFeedback user research survey program
1hr36 - Project Scarlett and Forza

On bringing multiple communities together:

Listening to the community:

On using features like Forza Race Regulation for player behavior/teaching:

On changing development focus:

“Player first”

On timelines and a release date:

On getting fans involved:

Sign up for user research surveys at www.aka.ms/ForzaFeedback

On iteration methods:

On the team’s outlook:

On Project Scarlett and technology:

Dan finished with “I’m more fired up about my career and working in this space, coming to work every day, than I have been in a long time.”

Brian concluded with the date for the next #ForzaMonthly livestream on July 1st, which will include more Forza Race Regulations info. He also invited viewers to submit questions for the July #ForzaMonthly livestream via www.aka.ms/AskForza which directs to a Community Events forum thread:

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E3 2019: Future Of Forza Motorsport. Interview With Dan Greenawalt
Andrew Beckford
June 11, 2019
http://www.motorworldhype.com/2019/06/forza-motorsport-e3-2019-dan-greenawalt/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PFvMSdmKS8

As in previous years, questions for the interview were solicited from the forums. Here are the questions asked during the 20 minute interview:

  • Why change the development system for the next game when the previous system and games have been a success?
  • Is this development process play-it-by-ear, or structured?
  • Is the addition of a mobile game (Forza Street) an indication that the brand may expand to other mediums like tv or film?
  • Is the team considering VR with the upcoming power of Project Scarlett?
  • Will the next game be available for the current generation of consoles, or wait for Project Scarlett?
  • What will players see in terms of locked content in the next game?
  • Will the next game prioritize the addition of new track environments?
  • Where is the heart of automotive culture in 2019?

This interview was actually conducted the same day as the Xbox Briefing (Sunday). Many of Dan’s comments here are echoed in the Forza Monthly interview. So in short, the messaging coming out of E3 this year was (as I interpret it):

  • Forza’s mission is to “Shape the future of automotive entertainment” and bring communities together.
  • Target communities include gamers, motorsport fans, and esports fans outside of Forza and its genre.
  • Forza has a long term vision (for the game and esports) that extends out at least 5-10 years.
  • There is currently no target date to release the next Forza project (unlike previous games), even as Project Scarlett was announced for Holiday 2020.
  • Tech is a tool, not the a goal itself, for reaching and including a larger player base.
  • Development focus changed approximately a year ago from tech-focus to community-focused teams.
  • Development methods include Rapid Iteration Testing and Evaluation and weekly play-tests.
  • Player interviews and surveys have already begun to collect feedback, particularly on sentiment rather than specific ‘things’.
  • Forza features are expected to be responsive to player feedback after release.
  • Features like FRR are intended for teaching/informing players rather than punishing them.
  • Xbox is not placing any specific demands on Forza’s progress.
  • Team morale sounds very high.
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#FORZAMONTHLY LIVESTREAM - JULY 2019

Replay: Forza Monthly | July 2019 - YouTube

In the July edition of #ForzaMonthly, Turn 10’s Chris Esaki presented the next step in Forza Race Regulations coming to FM7 with the July 2nd content update. At the end of the show he addressed questions from the community. The common theme in the answers was trade-offs between work on the current game and the next project.

Topics and Timestamps:

FORZA RACE REGULATIONS - 13:00 and 1:06:30
Chris Esaki presents FM7’s July content update for FRR which introduces “Avoidable Contact” penalties for collisions. Example gameplay shown. Addressing brake-checking griefing and false positives. Discussion on the difficulty of judging intent: “Any game trying to actually get an intent-based penalty system online will understand that this is super difficult. This is a super complex problem. There are probably a hundred or so - more than that - different scenarios that have to be solved for in time. And even then like in real life, sometimes it’s a coin toss of where’s going to go and it’s hard to really know true intent. For the future, we’re looking at things like machine learning - I’ve talked about it before - where we’re going to be investing heavily into that to really help us solve a lot of these issues, to make the system much more complex and nuanced. And it’s going to be a long time for us to get this thing right. But once again this is the first step.”

SHIFTING FROM FM7 TO THE NEXT FORZA PROJECT - 23:00
“One of the biggest things we’ve been running into on all sides - car production, track production, and of course gameplay - is the core problem around shipping a real current live game and making sure it is ready for the public, and investing in things that will help us for the next product. It’s all about speed for us, for a lot of purposes, to get to the next game. Something that I don’t think most people appreciate about the production for games that are in a live environment, that are actually in release to the public is that there is a massive overhead to getting it to the public. We can’t just code something and fire it out, we go through a ton of process for release. Basically it adds an overhead of from anywhere between 30-60% of our time, just goes to shipping this stuff. So when we’re looking at any of this development right now - shipping a track or shipping a car or even nuances to FRR - all of that work which is normally there - and we’re using all of this stuff for the next game - there’s a good 30-60% of time shipping it to FM7 which could be used to help develop a better game in the future. So we’re looking across all the studio and thinking, well, we could either continue this with FM7 and have 30-60% less of a game when we come out next time or we can start pushing all of that effort diirectly to the next product. … So we’re really going to go all in for the next product at this point.” and FM7 will have its final major content update in August.

COMMUNITY Q&A SESSION
Although the questions here were about FM7, they were addressed with the future in mind.

IMSA PARTNERSHIP, TRACK CONTENT - 59:00
Is there news on the IMSA partnership? “This is really about track content. So the IMSA partnership. we’re definitely looking at this for the future as something we want to go pretty deeply into. With track content, and specifically the licensed tracks for a full IMSA series, that’s a lot of work. Our tracks take a long time to build and it’s a lot of money. While that’s no excuse to not do them, once again this is a trade-off. Everything has to be looked at as a trade-off at this point. Does it go into FM7 or do we invest in the future? So we’ve had the track team for a long time now investing in the tools and technology that would help us ship more tracks, newer tracks, newer types of tracks for the future with a lot of new technology in them. The call was made: are we going to have IMSA tracks, or are we going to have a whole wildly new way of building tracks that are better for our players for the future so the next product will be all that we hope it can be? It was a hard call. We chose to invest in our future and make sure the next product has some of these truly authentic motorsport experiences either from a licensed series [IMSA, WEC, etc, or other]. These are things we absolutely want to bring in a much more authentic way, with the actual cars and tracks so we can actually bring series to Motorsport, and bring a more motorsport experience to Motorsport is certainly what we’re looking at for the future.”

DRAFTING AND PHYSICS IMPROVEMENTS - 1:01:30
Will drafting be fixed? “For the next game for sure. This is one of those things that’s on our list. So, we have actually have a racing fundamentals team. They’re building out our core A.I. and our physics. We have a lot of new physics stuff: we have a new tire model up and running, we have a ton of new suspension changes coming in - that is actually running right now and it solves a lot of the weight transfer issues - we have some new heat modeling going in, new tire wear and weather effects going in to the tire model. … I would think we would probably have a number of drafting settings so players can tune in the actual kind of racing they want, and something we’ll be playing with in terms of the different championship series. Just to spice up the racing we’ll probably have a number of different settings.”

PREVIOUS FORZA FANTASY TRACKS - 1:03:00
Will we see the return of old fantasy tracks? “One of the things that have come up - and Scott [Lee] is really passionate about this - is reclassifying all of these fantasy tracks as Forza Lore tracks, and Forza Lore experiences. We also count all of the Horizon series in that as well. All of the things [Horizon’s] done, they’re a part of the Forza universe. So we’re kind of classifying these things all in the Forza universe. There are so many benefits of that versus real-world tracks. There are things that we can do with those tracks that we can really be specific about the type of experience that we want, the type of racing, the type of passion, the type of things that we want to be experiencing on a track-to-track basis through these Forza Lore tracks. So you better bet we’ll be investing a lot in that in the future, because it allows us to craft a better experience we know the players are going to love. … The number one fantasy track that we always get asked for is Fujimi Kaido. We hear you guys loud and clear. We’re working on a lot of stuff right now.”

You can do something with a Lore track that you can’t do with a real track. “Most people don’t expect fantasy versions of Laguna Seca or the Nurburgring. Why would you? You’re there to race the real thing. You wouldn’t change it. Now with something like Nurburgring it’s a good example of something you might do like a historical version of it. It would be amazing to bring those experiences back, but that’s about as far as you’d want to go with a real track. We’ve even discussed things about bringing the alternate versions of those tracks, and we’re looking at those as well, but you’re there to race the real version. With our fantasy tracks the great thing there is you have so much more freedom about the types of experiences you can build in there. But more importantly there are things around how to learn in the game - how to teach players better race craft, how to control the car - that we really think fantasy tracks, or the Forza Lore tracks, can really help us there, and help our players get better at driving and understand how to control the car.”

EXPERIMENTAL DRAG - 1:08:00
Experimental Drag was one of the first steps in collecting feedback about a new feature. “For the next version it’ll be part of the overall experience.”

SEARCHABLE CUSTOM PUBLIC LOBBIES - 1:09:00
“Searchable custom public lobbies is one of the often requested features from the community. Same with A.I. and multiplayer, and build your own careers. We hear you loud and clear. I just want to caveat this with: we are completely looking at everything about how we organize online racing all up in the next version. And I think everyone will be pretty happy with some of these massive changes we’re looking at. But yeah, this is kind of core to the experience, I think - searchable custom public lobbies - and how that’s expressed, and making sure that portion of player creativity and social engagement and a lot of fun racing happens. So, yeah, we hear you loud and clear. More details on that to come.”

AUGUST Q&A - 1:10:00
Bing will have a new thread where users can submit questions for the August Forza Monthly Q&A.

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I Guess the ultimate question is… “Do we simply continue to support FM7 and Horizon 4 through the rest of the life cycle of the Xbox One and make FM8 a Launch Title for the 2020 console… or do we let Playground Games, release the Launch Title Forza Horizon game?”

That’s a really hard question to answer. Horizon has seen some amazing success, for more Mainstream/Casual players. Are these the people that buy Consoles on day one? Are the Motorsport fanatics that spend $1400 on a gaming rig, and $5000 on multiple consoles and multiple Screens, that are in a lower percentage of buyers, that will be pushing the NEXTBOX?

It’s really hard to say, but either way, we should likely expect a Forza game at launch… Which one it is, seems to be Microsoft’s call, and not some sort of coin flip… Maybe They want both games to be at launch. The only way to hit that window with a TOP NOTCH Forza game, is to not release one this year… Or to give us a Forza Streets for Console.

We all know the importance of a solid racing game at Console Launch… Sony Had nothing at PS4 nor PS3 nor PS2 Launch… 360 had a lackluster version of PGR3, which most people were unimpressed by. Xbox One Got FM5, Which most people considered the worst of the series at the time.

A 2-3 year build time for a PERFECT Forza Motorsports game, is something that could be a first for a console EVER… Launching with an absolute masterpiece available on day one.

Fingers crossed, This is the plan… I plan to get the console on day one, again, I couldn’t be more excited if Forza Motorsport 8 shows up as a launch title.

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August 5th #ForzaMonthly recap:


Replay: https://youtu.be/zRMDa40FP8g

Chis Esaki on community Q&A:
There are things we are looking into that may never see the light of day. Any answers now are not commitments to exactly what they’re making, as they are prototyping features that may change over time.

“Will the next Motorsport game lock cars behind Forzathon and other events?”
We ask ourselves, what if you had every car in the game from the start? Is this game about collecting cars, or about having a more deep, meaningful relationship with a smaller collection of cars? Locked cars may be a thing, but it’s less meaningful to the team compared to players experiencing a built-not-bought relationship with cars.

“Would it be possible to allow a friend to sit in the passenger seat of another car while racing online or in multiplayer?”
[talking about how players can learn from the game] What we’ve been doing is looking at how to get our slower players faster. Co-op driving, we have prototyped that. As something that connects players, we love that idea.

“Will the next game have a bigger emphasis on pits, like crew animations and the ability to make and choose our strategies?”
Multidimensional racing is how I think about it. This is a big one for us - deeper strategy, thinking about more than just the moment-to-moment racing, it’s super meaningful for us. Tire strategy, fuel strategy, battery strategy. I cannot commit to this, but this is what we’re investing in.


The next #ForzaMonthly will be on August 27th: “Wait, two episodes in August? In a word, yes. With monthly updates ending for Forza Motorsport 7, and news on the next Forza game still to come, we’ve made some changes to the “Forza Monthly” show schedule to better align with other things happening in the Forza Universe. In the short term, that means two “monthly” shows in August.”^

Questions for that Q&A can be submitted here: http://aka.ms/AskForza

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Chris Esaki tweeted:

https://twitter.com/LoungeToy/status/1192926936143523840

LinkedIn listing

Microsoft Careers listing:

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Toyota Returning to Forza “for years to come”


https://twitter.com/ForzaMotorsport/status/1196868827646222337

During the November 2019 #ForzaMonthly livestream and in the November 11th Week in Review, Brian Ekberg announced:

While the announcement only specifically mentioned Forza Horizon 4, the timeline of years would of course logically include the next Forza Motorsport project. Details are TBA.

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Forza Monthly - December 2019

Replay: Forza Monthly | December 2019 - YouTube

On the December 2019 edition of Forza Monthly, Chris Esaki provided an update on the progress with the next Forza Motorsport project:

"It’s been this hard road to get to where we are today. The studio got a first chance at actually playing this new experience all day long and had a great time with it. We experienced our new tire model, we experienced our new tire pressure model, we have a new way that heat interacts with tire pressure, and we actually have dynamic track temperatures affecting this all. We have dynamic rubbering-in on the track, we have a new atmospheric pressure system that actually has pressure affecting things like air density affecting aerodynamics and power as well as the tire pressure. And we have an entire new suspension system with new suspension modeling.

I’m missing about 15 other things that are all just under the hood that we all got to experience. Once again that’s just kind of the moment to moment rubber meets the road (forgive the pun) experience, but we actually got to play the new game. And for me and for the studio that was the most memorable moment. We’ll be having more to say this year."

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when are we gonna get more FM8 info/footage? i was disappointed they didnt show a ray tracing demo of FM8 at game stack, i wish they wouldnt be so quiet and gave out more info about the game. Its about time tbh

I wonder when the Wishlist threads for the next game will open? Hopefully soon. For what Cars, Tracks, Features, etc that we want in the next game.

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