By The future of Motorsport is in doubt
- by Ben Kerry
Last week, some of the Xbox community started taking note of how quiet Forza Motorsport had been on social media since Microsoft’s recent layoffs, which the Xbox developer swiftly responded to with reassurances that both Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon 5 are still being supported by the team. The thing is though, no more major updates have been announced for the 2023 sim racer despite a two-month absence, and we’re starting to wonder what the future might look like for Forza in general.
The big question we have at this point is, will Forza Horizon become the de-facto leader for the franchise? To be honest, for the last few releases it’s felt like the open world arm of Forza has been top dog – pretty much since Horizon 3 and Horizon 4 solidified the series as one of the best open world racers out there. Forza Motorsport was still consistently releasing around those two titles, but general excitement levels felt higher for the FH releases of the time.
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Of course, Forza Motorsport still had its place in the Xbox lineup – after all, it’s been the platform’s exclusive sim racer since 2005 on the original Xbox. But, despite curiosity surrounding Turn 10’s 2023 reboot, FM for Xbox Series X|S just never really landed with the broader community, coming and going like a hot lap at Brands Hatch. There have been some great updates since and the game is in a decent spot right now, but we wouldn’t say there’s much enthusiasm for another entry, anecdotally.
And that brings us back to our initial question, is Forza Horizon going to become the main Forza franchise over at Xbox HQ? With Phil Spencer teasing another FH entry next year, and Turn 10 seemingly losing quite a few staff recently, that certainly looks to be the case. There’s a lot that Microsoft can do with future Forza Horizon iterations, but honestly, Motorsport just feels like it’s spinning its wheels right now. This could be the right time to retire the series, even if such an eventuality would have felt impossible just a few years ago.
Anyway, what do you think about the future of Forza here in 2025? Do you reckon we’ve seen the last Motorsport title and that Horizon is now the default Forza series? Will Xbox create a new type of Forza game, potentially next year? Or, are we being silly and jumping the gun in pondering Forza Motorsport’s untimely demise?
Comment down below and let us know what you think.
Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin’ in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he’s not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that’s far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.