Xbox Breaks Silence — Forza Motorsport at Least Living Long Enough to Bring Back Time-Limited Content

Official screenshots of Forza Motorsport (2023).
Forza Motorsport will leave to see its 2nd birthday, although it won't be particularly exciting. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

During the latest round of mass layoffs and terminations at Microsoft (which affected around 9,000 people), one team at Xbox was hit particularly hard: Turn 10 Studios, the developers behind the storied Forza Motorsport simulation racing franchise.

Forza may be one of Xbox's largest and most renowned home-grown IPs, but that didn't prevent as much as 50% of Turn 10 from being let go. Since then, the future of Forza Motorsport has been looking bleak, and it didn't help that Xbox suddenly went completely quiet.

Finally, we have some news. Turn 10 Studios has broken the silence to share the plan for FM23 over the next few months — it's still not looking good for the series as a whole, but the game at least isn't being totally abandoned yet.

Revealed in a new blog post on Forza.net, Turn 10 is planning to support Forza Motorsport by slowly and permanently adding previously time-limited content to the game.

Forza Motorsport players will get a new Featured Tour added to the Career Mode around once a month, allowing players to complete all the included Series and earn the exclusive reward cars.

Progress will also be carried over from when the Tour was initially featured for a limited time, so players who couldn't finish in time can pick up where they left off. You'll still only be able to earn the featured reward car once, though.

We wanted to assure players that Turn 10 and Playground Games will continue to support Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon 5.

Turn 10 Studios, X

Turn 10 is also adding Open Class Tours to the Challenge Hub, allowing players to also complete those series and earn those reward cars. The cycle will continue until Forza Motorsport eventually permanently includes all Featured and Open Class Tours.

The Challenge Hub will be home to driver suit challenges, as well, but those will apparently still be limited time.

The schedule for Featured Rivals events has been laid out until the beginning of Jan. 2026, too, giving players even more to do.

You'll notice, of course, that none of this is new. I'm glad we finally have an idea of what to expect for Forza Motorsport, but it does seem clear that the game is effectively in maintenance mode.

The writing is on the wall for Motorsport, long live Horizon

I hope we see Forza Motorsport return in a big way a few years down the line. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

My colleague, Richard Devine, just recently wrote about how Forza Motorsport's legacy feels like it's fading into silence, but now we at least have something to work with. Turn 10 adding all the missing content back to the game is also infinitely better than simply dropping the game into an abyss.

That being said, Turn 10 has still basically been turned into a support studio for Playground Games and the Forza Horizon franchise, which is expected to debut a new entry in the next few years.

I'll take that over a full studio closure any day, especially since it means there's still hope that Forza Motorsport could one day return. Even as someone who personally far prefers the more arcade-like Horizon series, though, the fall of Motorsport leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

You can see why Forza Motorsport ultimately failed, but that doesn't make this feel any better.

I enjoyed Forza Motorsport (2023) when I reviewed it and felt it had an incredibly strong foundation upon which to add new content, but the game failed to gain any significant momentum following its launch.

Flawed multiplayer and progression systems led to a discontent community, and the game sadly never managed to crawl out of that hole — even though Turn 10 actively responded to feedback and worked to make the game better update after update.

Whatever the cause, this is where we are now. It absolutely shouldn't have taken a month for fans to get a statement on the future of Forza Motorsport, but a commitment to return missing content is certainly better than "the game is dead now, sowwy."

Zachary Boddy
Staff Writer

Zachary Boddy (They / Them) is a Staff Writer for Windows Central, primarily focused on covering the latest news in tech and gaming, the best Xbox and PC games, and the most interesting Windows and Xbox hardware. They have been gaming and writing for most of their life starting with the original Xbox, and started out as a freelancer for Windows Central and its sister sites in 2019. Now a full-fledged Staff Writer, Zachary has expanded from only writing about all things Minecraft to covering practically everything on which Windows Central is an expert, especially when it comes to Microsoft.

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