The founders of developer Forza Horizon Playground Games first wanted to restart Project Gotham Racing. When they brought it up in Turn 10, developer Forza Motorsports fired it up. Right away, Playground Games created Forza Horizon, a game they were allowed to make.
Playground Games co-founder Trevor Williams has rebooted the Project Gotham Racing series in a Los Angeles restaurant. Four PGR games were released for Xbox consoles from 2001 to 2007, these arcade racing games were created by Bizarre Creations. When Bizarre was acquired by Activision in 2007, there were no more Project Gotham Racing games. The rights remained with Microsoft, allowing this company to continue making the game.
When Williams offered to make new PGR games at Turn 10 Studios, the developer didn’t see the point. Here’s what Williams and Torn 10 Studios CEOs Dan Greenwalt and Alan Hartman say In an interview with GQ† Why Turn 10 doesn’t look like a reboot of Project Gotham Racing is unclear from the article.
Williams says he immediately got worried and didn’t know what to do. Moments later, Hartmann asked Williams what his studio could do with the Forza series. “Then we poured what would become practical Horizon on a napkin,” Williams says.
2012 saw the release of the first Horizon Games, an open world racing game that’s more arcade than Forza Motorsports. Forza Horizon games have since become one of Microsoft’s biggest game franchises. The fifth game in the series was released last November, a game according to Microsoft that saw the best “first week” at the time From an Xbox game†
The interview continues about the development The new Forza Motorsports gameWhich is scheduled to be released next year. In the article, Greenwalt and Hartmann explain how they are developing the game and hope it will become a racing platform within Game Pass.