Why no PC Port?

I’m not trying to bellyache or whine or be all “PC MASTER RACE,” but I’m just legitimately curious, why has Turn10 never really talked of porting Forza series to PC?

I’ve been a fan of the series since 3. I own Forza 3, 4, and Horizon One. I have logged many hours on all three games. I have quite a bit of the DLC. I feel it’s one of the best racing games offered today, and has always striven to be the best in its class. I have a slight bad taste in my mouth for the Porsche DLC being 20 dollars for Xbox 360/FM4, but that’s for a different reason other than the game itself. There’s people in the NFS SHIFT community porting Forza Motorsport 4 cars and other 3D models (successfully) to SHIFT, a game that came out 5 years ago, and 2 years before FM4.

Since Forza Motorsport 2 and since last December of 2014, Forza has sold 17.87 million dollars across two platforms: Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Forza Motorsport 2 Sales
Forza Motorsport 3 Sales
Forza Motorsport 4 Sales
Forza Horizon Sales
Forza Motorsport 5 Sales
Forza Horizon 2 Sales

So, let’s compare how much similar franchises have sold. I’ll separate Xbox from PC, and post a total of each.

From EA:

Need for Speed Pro Street Sales (Xbox 360)
Need for Speed SHIFT (Xbox 360)
Need for Speed SHIFT 2: Unleashed (Xbox 360)

In total sales just for 360, that’s only 4.34 million dollars globally.

Need for Speed Pro Street Sales (PC)
Need for Speed SHIFT (PC)
Need for Speed SHIFT 2: Unleashed (PC)

Altogether, NFS’s racing “sim” titles for PC has made only 0.28 million dollars.

From Codemasters:

GRID (Xbox 360)
GRID 2 (Xbox 360)
GRID Autosport (Xbox 360)

Total: 1.15 million

GRID (PC)
GRID 2 (PC)
GRID Autosport (PC)

That comes to only 0.11 million.

It’s not really a fair comparison, since Forza has more titles in the franchise. So, just average them out.

Xbox 360/Forza franchise: 15.63 million total/4 games = average of ~3.9 million.
Xbox 360/NFS franchise: 4.34 million/3 games = average of ~1.4 million.
Xbox 360/GRID franchise: 1.15 million/3 games = ~0.38 million

Forza has a higher profit on just the Xbox 360 with only 4 games in the franchise, but what about compared to the other games with PC counterparts as well?

Forza average: ~2.98 million
NFS “sims” average: ~1.54 million
GRID average: ~0.42

So, when you look at those numbers, the gap isn’t as extreme between Forza and NFS, especially when you consider that average is from 6 titles on 2 consoles, one being a successor to the other, while Need for Speed’s average is only 3 titles in the franchise (the ones similar to Forza in gameplay), as well as released on two simultaneous platforms in the same generation.

On Xbox 360, Forza Motorsport 3 runs at 60 FPS. I couldn’t find any info on resolution.
FM4 runs at a 720p resolution native, not 1080p, but it does anti-alias (4x MSAA) and runs at locked 60 FPS with Vsync engaged. I can run NFS Shift on my PC (although the game is 2 years older, it was the same generation of console hardware for 360) at 1080P with 4x MSAA 60FPS, without Vsync and with a frame limiter with no screen tearing. I’m playing my PC games on a 1080P 60Hz 40" TV through HDMI and with a Radeon R9 280x with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. The Xbox 360 has maybe one extra useable gig of RAM when you consider that the RAM already has to have 3 gigs in use for the UI and OS out of 8GB. SHIFT ran at a constant 30 FPS with a Radeon 4650 chipset and a Radeon 6670 with 2x MSAA and 1360x768 on a 60Hz 18" TV using HDMI, again, with no Vsync or tearing issues for me. I have not played 5 personally, because I can’t afford 400 for a new console to play just one or two games. It doesn’t make financial sense. Also, some articles have claimed that FM5 runs at 1080P 60Hz native, but not all of it will–reflected surfaces run at half of that (30 FPS). Why? The hardware can’t handle it.

So hardware-wise, PC is about on par with the Xbox 360, and is maybe capable of more. Xbox One sales are weaker in comparison to the PS4 worldwide, and Forza Motorsport 5 has been out for a year. We’re seeing people buying 4K TV’s and expecting things to have a 1080P 60FPS standard at the minimum. The consoles are just now doing 1080p native, and not all of them at 60FPS–they’re lagging behind. Almost any TV you buy has a 60Hz refresh rate… some PC monitors are capable of 75Hz, or more. Game performance hounds like me would buy it, and continue to buy it (but I’m just one person)–if the game was on PC and I wasn’t having to buy a new console every few years, shelling out hundreds of dollars to play one franchise, I would buy a game with the Forza name plate for PC as quickly as it came out like a fanatic (as much as I hate to admit it). I pre-ordered Forza Motorsport 4. Not because of Day 1 content, but I couldn’t wait to play it. I think porting the game to PC would unlock a whole new experience. FM4 supported multiple TV’s on Xbox 360 (3 of them). You could do that with PC as well, before Xbox 360 could do it!

I just wanted to start a discussion about it.

Your PC is nearly 200% faster than the 360 so its well “above par”.

Upscaled to 1080p isnt 1080p.

I would by it again in a heartbeat if it came out on PC.

2 Likes

VGchartz doesnt include digital purchases so your PC comparisons are well off. its estimated that roughly 80% of pc sales are not accounted for on VGChartz.

And you answered your own question. That exact thing is happening to Project Cars right now. FM5 is ported currently to DX12. To what state we dont know, nor do we know if we will see it on Windows 10. (or any other forza).

Now to further this. We need to compare environments. On both the 360 and X1. We have 1 sim-lite game being FM. The rest are arcade.

When we move to PC, this space is much more competitive. We have rFactor, Iracing, assetto corsa (exluding pcars cause multi) etc.
So lets take the big one in this space, IRacing. Its estimated, that iracing makes roughly $3.8 million per year.

Forza would have appeal on PC but it would seriously, seriously need to step up its efforts in the actual “Motorsport” department of the game that has been neglected to actually have an impact.

Then we need to account for numbers. At last count I think xbox live was 50 million users? only a handful of those players will play Forza.
We also need to summize that not all of those numbers in the sales charts are accurate. Forza was bundled with consoles, yet these still count towards sales. If the game wasnt bundled, would those people even have played forza at all?

Forza would fill a unique niche on the PC market. Games like Assetto Corsa, iRacing, rFactor and so on are very hardcore simulations focused on real motorsports conventions with comparably smaller car lists, etcetera.

Forza on the other hand is technically a “simcade” racer, like GT, that features realistic handling and unrealistic scenarios, with a very large amount of content.

However, it’ll never come to PC, for the same reason Halo never does: It’s Xbox’s killer app. Forza is mostly a vehicle (pun intended) for new graphics technology, since cars are very easy to make look realistic. Microsoft needs Forza to stay on Xbox and continue to prove that they make the nicest-looking racer on consoles.

Well its a Microsoft company so they’ll want to it to be exclusive to give them an edge, and its worked since many people have bought an XB1 specifically for Forza 5/Horizon 2

I think that piracy is the main reason that’s holding a PC version back. If online pirates create vaporware and everyone is tempted to download and play it, then Turn 10 and Microsoft would lose money on the game. Piracy is no good for a game developer.

piracy is higher on consoles.

Gaming piracy seperating fact from fiction

Congrats turn10 on an excellent game…coming from years of pc sims grandprix legends/rfactor/assetto corsa etc…I find forza 6 is the most complete racing experience so far. Ive had some intense races so far with the ai especially in the rain. the aqua pane effects are brilliant. The physics in my opinion i would classify as a sim…you can’t over drive in forza 6…it rewards the whole slow in fast out philosophy. I’m amazed at how good it looks and the steady 60fps with a field of 24 cars. All on a $400 box. All the modern pc sim titles lack the presentation and polish of forza 6. I enjoy customising the cars and autovista is awesome for car lovers. The only gripes i have are:

  1. replays at 30fps
  2. cant change cockpit positions…some car cockpits are off centre and/or too far back.
  3. steering lock 90 degrees left or right
  4. jaggies

A pc version will be awesome…i understand the need to sell xboxes, so how about releasing a pc version during the end of the game’s popularity?

They have talkt about but it is hard to make a port of a game that have been made only for console look at gta IV it was soooo many bugs in the game im not only talking about game glitchs im talking about grapichs and fps. Need for speed was lockt at 30fps and everybody got angery at EA. im sorry to say this but Forza is a console game right know but maybe in the future we will se a forza game on pc with full lock on the wheel and grapichs that will amaze you. Ihope for you guys on pc twill see forza 7 or forza horizon 3 on the pc.