Forza Motorsport Team Reportedly Loses 'Nearly 50% Of Staff' In Xbox Job Cuts

Called this the other day. They'll trim the team and focus on more spaced out releases. FM just doesn't rock the world like it used to back when, say, FM5 released. Both FM6 / FM7 felt more like expansions.

I imagine based on licences and tech alone, T10 was hella pricey to run.

@Kaloudz I said this on a previous post but the new FM just wasn't a good game. Great driving physics and I enjoyed it for about 15 hours, but then extreme boredom set in because there were no cool modes to keep me playing

“ This is the fourth mass layoff at Xbox in the last 18 months.”

Xbox acquired Activision in October 2023. 18 months back from today is January 2024, or 3 months after acquiring Activision. The ramifications keep coming.

@Coletrain Exactly. I didn't even bother with it based on first wave feedback - and it didn't change for the better for a good few months post release. That game alone would have cost a bomb to produce for such a weak reception - and given that they cant exactly cross platform release is (GT on PS) I don't think it's something they likely feel is worth keeping afloat.

I may be wrong but I think they'll cut the team to half the cost, and have something released more spaced apart. I could be wrong, but that's just how I see it making more sense.

This is developing faster than poor Ben or Fraser can possibly keep up with, but the latest is that The Initiative has been closed and Perfect Dark cancelled.

Perfect Dark is confirmed cancelled and The Initiative is closed. WTAF.

And commentators here would have everyone believe all is peachy in Xbox land...

That's a brutal amount of layoffs. How this will impact Forza Motorsport I have no idea.

Perfect dark gone too,

@K1LLEGAL Source?

@SaltySpitoon957 Matt Booty

https://x.com/jezcorden/status/1940455715799511193?s=46&t=RZD8eqRuj7JRII0QVXd-fg

@Kaloudz tbh if it were me I'd just go whole hog on Forza horizon only and add a few stadiums to the map where you can do a mini GT mode. Oh and classic 90s and 00s pop rock to help with my blind nostalgia 🤣 (god damnit I miss Burnout 3)

@K1LLEGAL I just saw the news and it's quite depressing.

@Coletrain I know what you mean. It's a good game in a lot ways but it is lacking something and I drifted away.

I love a proper circuit racer so if you have any recommendations to replace it with I'd love to know!

@Coletrain I wouldn't disagree at all with that. They see stats that we don't, so for all we know, only a small portion of the overall userbase plays FM over FH. I'd say FH is more popular (at a guess) but you're right, there's so much PG could do - even going so far to make a BO clone.

It feels like FM is done for after this... They just kept a team to keep the game running and they will stick with Horizon from now on...

@Kaloudz
Ages ago FM was on the sales decline and FH was on the sales increase.
Very sad but not surprised.

Also let’s take into account Sony already have GT and don’t need FM.
But FH is a good for PlayStation sales wise.
If you are going to be a publisher you have think about these things.

@OldGamer999 Yeah doesn't surprise me either. FH has the luxury of changing its locale and, well, who doesn't love an arcade racer. FM however, is harder to evolve given it's a track racer. There's still a lot they can do with that sort of game, but T10 just didn't implement enough changes IMO. Each game from FM6 up felt expansion-like, rather than a fresh experience.

@Kaloudz
I’m to scared right now after perfect dark going to mention the F word.

Got to recoup that money somehow

@OldGamer999 Fable? Nah that's 110% safe. That's already been hit for a 2026 release. They wont touch that. I think we get Fable next year, and maybe even FH6 late next year or 2027. I think those will be safe. I could be wrong but it wouldn't make sense to shutter teams that have games literally sitting on the "nearly ready to go" line.

@Kaloudz
Dam you mentioned the F word, you best hide now.

@OldGamer999 Haha, you can gun for me if it gets hit but I reckon we're safe. Most of what's been hit so far are games that are years off after being years and years in development, and games that haven't even been announced yet.

I just hope Undead Labs are safe, because if they've fallen behind on development too, or have dragged their heels, that's gunna hit hard. Folks need to remember that we consumers are not privy to the info the higher ups are.

SoD3 for instance, we assume is coming along nicely. Hell, many of us even thought it would release this year. However, lets assume the (let's say) bi-annual update from Undead Labs came back that the game needs another three years... that's a lot of time to pay for a studio for a game that's already been years in the making. They're likely to get a cut based on that alone as the money to recoup on a years and years and years-long project isn't likely to come to fruition.

Sad, but, it's business :/

@K1LLEGAL Wow! You see THAT is a perfect example of a complete failure of Microsoft’s EXECUTIVE team, NOT the studio, because it was the executive team who came up with the idea for the studio, pumped money into it, hired people. Now due to their failure they fire everyone and close it, wasting multiple millions at least whilst the executive team are untouched. Disgusting corporate management IMO. And that is after they showcase the demo reel for the game and inform the customer base they were making it getting everyone hyped.. Booty should be getting the booty…

Xbox will be dead in 4 or 5 years. And Microsoft own incompetence will have killed it.

As awful as this is due to the human element involved, trimming down Turn 10 at least makes logical sense. There’s little money to be made selling games on Xbox, hence the shift to 3rd party publishing (masquerading in the trappings of ‘we make hardware too!’). There is mega profit to be made shipping titles on competing platforms like PlayStation—the problem is, while Forza Horizon sells huge numbers because there’s nothing quite like it on Sony’s machine, the same isn’t true for Forza Motorsport. They already have the premiere track racer; no one wants ‘We have Gran Turismo at home.’

Forza is the Xbox big racer game they had a show to show it off and now lay offs the game is boring

@SaltySpitoon957 the last game sucked and the series was going down hill after 4. Not sure if it was just bloat. Maybe a smaller more passionate team will bring back the glory days, I doubt it though, MS just cannot manage game studios

@S1ayeR74 I do wonder what the staff were doing for 7 years.

Either that slice we saw last year was fake… which is BAD, or they are cancelling a game that looked that good, which is BAD.

It’s just mind boggling. Feels a bit like Tango all over again (though different).

@Balaam_ Forza 1-4 were the best racers around, then Turn 10 seemed to go to *****. Racing fans on PS would buy a top tier Forza of the quality of 4. Its not like they are swimming in GT releases, they could stager the release so it comes out 2 years after every GT, but hey MS dont know their asses from their elbow when it comes to gaming so they would probably just release it thevsamevday as GT

Turn10 has clearly been acting strange lately. I want to believe that downsizing isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I personally loved the last Forza game. Still play it to this day on a regular cadence. Unlike GT7 which is pretty, but extremely dull. The coffee shop theme, boring music, and stiff gameplay leave me sleepy. I definitely prefer the last forza to the first forza of the last gen as well.

Do you guys have a problem with turning while playing Forza? I am not able to turn even though I slow down before the turn. It seems the car just goes straight no matter what I do... Just wondering if I am the only one.

@K1LLEGAL Yeap, show gameplay then gets closed down and everyone fired. How much money did MS literally throw down the toilet today? It's just throwing good money after bad these days.

I've seen others say. With 50% of the staff fired, what sort of studio is now left? You can forget another Forza Motorsport IMO. It'll practically be a support studio now.

I enjoyed FM when it released, but my early interest and goodwill were killed off by crappy bugs. That's not to mention other game mechanics that people generally hated, such as car levelling.
I don't like to hear about people losing their jobs but this game was a big flop.

Horizon has completely left Motorsport in the dust, and is by far "THE" Definitive racer on Xbox. The 2023 Reboot of Motorsport was very lackluster and disappointing in comparison. No big surprise here IMO

@S1ayeR74 they have tons of money to throw away unfortunately. Just think of The money they wasted on Windows phones

@S1ayeR74 I mean... Yeah, they laid people off. But that doesn't really mean they can't hire people back when it time to ramp up production of the next FM game. These lay off at Turn 10 really just mean that the content pipeline for FM2023 is over. The remaining developers will be heading back to the drawing boarding and see how they can bring back the franchise. (reboot #2 baby)

@NishimuraX The latest one is “they gotta run a business” as if MS didn’t spent billions acquiring all those studios and they were reporting losses each quarter…

Good riddance of Turn 10 staff, if they had bad staff, bad leadership, get rid of them. Have a smaller team, with smarter ideas, better time spent on it, or else support or gone.

Car licensing isn't cheap and bad staff, also doesn't help with them using those.

But Raven, really? Well that sucks. I feel for them, as you never know with assist studios really. Depends on the staff I guess. Probably some pretty useless or some not great contributions/conversations I assume.

Or whatever metric they go by to get rid of them not meeting the expectations set.

IF they hire more staff sure, but make sure it's good staff, not ones so useless we got a terrible product and terrible marketing that just put me off the game and console entirely.

All they had to do was give us a proper new entry, but no, they had to go all live services on us. How did that work out?