Forza

• 1. Introduction

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  Forza is the Italian word for force and strength, and it is also the name of a racing video game series published by Xbox Game Studios for Xbox consoles and Microsoft Windows. Say it the way the series does, FORT-sə. Behind that single name stand two very different kinds of racing game, built by two studios in two countries. One chases the exact behavior of real cars. The other drops players into a travelling festival where the whole map is a playground. This documentary asks where the series came from and who built it. It asks how computer-controlled rivals can learn from human drivers. It asks why one half of the family flourished while the other struggled. And it asks what happens when a franchise this successful runs into a corporate restructuring.

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• 2. Rival to Gran Turismo

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  Microsoft created Turn 10 Studios in 2001 with a clear assignment: build an Xbox answer to Gran Turismo, the racing series on PlayStation. Many of its first employees had worked in game publishing, with credits on Project Gotham Racing and Golf 4.0, but had never taken part in actual game development. The first Forza Motorsport doubled as a demonstration. It was meant to show off the original Xbox and its online network, Xbox Live. From the start, the studio wanted a general audience rather than only racing enthusiasts, and it made car culture part of the pitch. It also poured effort into researching how cars handle, sometimes working with professional race teams from Formula One and NASCAR.

  Building the cars was a craft problem of its own. Early on, Turn 10 modeled cars and tracks in off-the-shelf software such as 3D Studio Max. Today it uses a program it wrote itself, called Fuel, which lets several artists work on one model at the same time. As games grew more complex, a single car model for the Xbox One versions took four people six months. So the studio began leaning on manufacturers, who share CAD files, allow real cars to be scanned, or let photographers take hundreds or thousands of pictures of newly launched models. Microsoft trademarked the studio's engine, ForzaTech, in 2015. It now drives current Forza games and the Fable reboot. Yet an engine explains only part of why a Forza opponent behaves the way it does.

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• 3. Drivatars

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  The word Drivatar blends driver and avatar, and every Forza title uses the system to run its computer-controlled racers. Microsoft Research Cambridge designed it so that opponents would learn and adapt to the way the player drives. The early games used a Bayesian neural network. Faced with a problem, such as reaching a certain turn, it weighs possible solutions and their probabilities using data from earlier races. It then picks the answer it is most confident about, setting the turn angle and the pressure on the accelerator. Sharing a learned Drivatar originally meant copying it onto an Xbox Memory Unit and carrying it to another console.

  Forza Motorsport 5 changed the method. Since that game, Drivatars rely on reinforcement learning and record racing data from every connected player on the Xbox Network. They track a car's position and speed and how consistent the driving is, then guess the turn angle and speed for each stretch of track. That lets them infer how to handle courses and cars the player has never tried. The data goes to the cloud, and updated Drivatars come back down to other consoles. Each upload is timestamped, so older uploads earn less confidence.

  Some players worried that they could exploit the system and rubber-band the AI back toward them. Turn 10 answered that only the cars are rubber-banded: their performance shifts slightly depending on how far ahead or behind the player is. The studio also placed a layer of control between player and AI inputs, so developers can adjust Drivatar behavior and head off unexpected results. The series has since become known for one of the longest-running uses of machine learning in gaming.

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• 4. Playground's Pitch

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  In 2009, in the English town of Leamington Spa, Gavin Raeburn, Trevor Williams and Ralph Fulton co-founded Playground Games. All three were former Codemasters employees. Raeburn was known for his work on the Dirt and TOCA series, but the open world of Test Drive Unlimited had inspired him, and he left Codemasters feeling it lacked the resources for his ambitions. Other Playground staff came from Bizarre Creations, Black Rock Studio and Sony Liverpool, all racing game companies in the United Kingdom.

  At the same time, Turn 10 was looking for a partner willing to branch out its franchise. At E3 2010, Raeburn and Williams offered an open-world Forza Motorsport in exchange for resources, and Turn 10 agreed. Playground built what became Forza Horizon with close backing from Turn 10. The result centers on a fictional music festival, the Horizon Festival, set in invented versions of real places that players are free to roam. The racing is more arcade-like than in Motorsport, though it keeps a toned-down version of the simulation physics.

  Playground had long worked with Microsoft Studios as a third-party developer. Microsoft announced that it was acquiring the studio only at an E3 conference on the 10th of June 2018.

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• 5. The Motorsport Line

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  Forza Motorsport reached shelves on the 3rd of May 2005 with 231 cars and tracks from 15 real and fictional locations. It remains the only entry released on the original Xbox. It set habits the series kept: damage that changes how a car performs, a paint job and decal editor, tuning and upgrades bought with credits won in races, and driving assists that reduce end-of-race bonuses. Every successor has also offered online multiplayer through Xbox Live. Forza Motorsport 2 followed on the 29th of May 2007 as the first Xbox 360 title. It offered 349 cars and 23 circuits from twelve locations, plus force feedback and an auction house where custom skins could be sold. Up to 4,100 vinyls could cover any car, and upgrades changed a car's performance index and class. Microsoft promoted it with Forza Motorsport Showdown, a four-part miniseries on Speed, hosted by Lee Reherman.

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• 6. Horizon Road Trips

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  Players of the first Forza Horizon, released for Xbox 360 in 2012, earned wristbands in Colorado by driving fast, wrecking property and winning races. The game was the series' first open world. It borrowed the physics of Forza Motorsport 4, tuned for more than 65 variants of terrain. Hidden barns held treasure cars that no showroom or race could provide. Forza Horizon 2 in 2014 moved to Southern France and Northern Italy on a map three times larger. Its Xbox One version added dynamic weather and lighting, and a Ford Raptor challenge sent drivers through a forest guided only by headlights. Sumo Digital built the Xbox 360 version, which was the last Forza game on that console.

  Forza Horizon 3 launched on the 27th of September 2016 in Australia, with the player cast as the host of the Horizon Festival itself. Sand and deep water became drivable for the first time, and the roster grew to 350 cars, including buggies and trophy trucks. Its Blizzard Mountain expansion came on the 13th of December 2016, and a Hot Wheels expansion called Thrilltopia followed on the 9th of May 2017, with orange and blue stunt tracks.

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• 7. Mobile Spin-offs

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  On the 8th of May 2018, a free Windows 10 game called Miami Street appeared, built by Electric Square. Microsoft rebranded it as Forza Street on the 15th of April 2019, and iOS and Android versions arrived on the 5th of May 2020. It ran on Unreal Engine 4 rather than ForzaTech and was meant for low-end devices. Races were short street runs where players only pressed and released a button for acceleration and braking, since steering was automatic. Nitrous gave a speed boost, and the app icon changed cars with each special event.

  Reviews were mixed. Critics praised the visuals but disliked the overly simple controls, the freemium model and the tedious gameplay, and ranked it the worst Forza title. On the 10th of January 2022, Andy Beaudoin, a principal design director at Turn 10 Studios, announced its closure. The final update shortened energy recharge time, cut item prices and disabled microtransactions, refunding anyone who had bought them in the previous 30 days. The game shut down on the 11th of April 2022.

  Forza Customs, from British developer Hutch Games, was the franchise's first non-racing title. It was a tile-matching game about car customization, built on Unity and rebranded from an earlier release called Custom Car Works. It was closed and pulled from app stores on the 10th of March 2025.

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• 8. Sales and Shifts

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  By August 2014, the Forza series had sold over 10 million copies, and the total later reached 16 million, which made it the sixth best-selling racing franchise. It had grossed over US$1 billion at retail by December 2016. Forza Motorsport 3 sold 3 million units by February 2010. Over one third of Xbox One owners bought Forza Motorsport 5 by February 2014, which Eurogamer estimates at 1.3 million copies. Forza Horizon 3 sold around 2.5 million units by December 2016, and over 14 million unique players had registered in the community on Xbox One and Windows 10. Forza Horizon 4 passed 12 million players as of August 2019.

  Critics praised the first Forza Motorsport for its realistic handling, its paint job editor and its Xbox Live integration. The rewind assist in the third game won praise, as did the fourth game's Autovista mode. Every main Motorsport and Horizon title earned a Metacritic score of at least 80 out of 100, except Forza Motorsport 5. It drew criticism for fewer cars and tracks than its predecessors and for microtransactions, so Turn 10 raised race rewards and lowered car prices, and some removed cars later returned as downloads. The first Horizon was welcomed for its potential, though reviewers faulted its Drivatars and sparse multiplayer. Since Horizon 3, the Horizon games have regularly won Best Sports/Racing Game at The Game Awards. The Horizon series has since outperformed Motorsport, which has struggled to look different enough, as players seem to prefer Horizon's gameplay.

  For years the schedule was regular: Motorsport in odd years, Horizon in even years. That pattern broke in 2019, when no new Motorsport game appeared. Forza Horizon 5 reached PlayStation 5 on the 29th of April 2025, the first Forza release on a non-Xbox console. In July 2025, Turn 10 lost nearly half its workforce in layoffs. Later reports said it would become a support studio for Horizon games and ForzaTech, effectively ending Forza Motorsport, according to former content coordinator Fred Russell.

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