Ex-Turn 10 developer says the Forza Motorsport team has been wiped out

It seems that Microsoft's major layoffs and closures indirectly included the Forza Motorsport series.

Surely no one has missed the big purge at Microsoft this week where 9,000 people lost their jobs, a large proportion of them at Xbox. One of the studios seemingly hit hardest was Turn 10, creator of the once prestigious Forza Motorsport series.

Now a former employee - content coordinator Fred Russel - writes via Facebook (thanks Pure Xbox) that the entire Forza Motorsport team has been wiped out:

"Turn 10 Studios has shuttered the Forza Motorsport space and the team is no more. A very sad day for one of the best car racing video games. I loved my time there."

It looks like Turn 10 is now relegated to being a support studio for British Playground Games - something Xbox insider Klobrille also corroborates - whose Forza Horizon series is bigger than ever.

The first Forza Motorsport was released for the original Xbox in 2005 as a direct competitor to Gran Turismo. It became immensely popular and was long considered the better series until Forza Motorsport 6 in 2015. Then Turn 10 fell behind and since Forza Motorsport 7 received more mixed reviews and criticism from racing fans, Forza Horizon has been Forza's poster boy.

After a full six-year hiatus, the series made a comeback in 2023, renamed just Forza Motorsport with no number after it, and described as something of a reboot. But even this time the ratings were mixed and it was considered worse than 2022's Gran Turismo 7. Now the saga seems to be over, and whether Microsoft tries to reboot the series again later with a new team or simply leave the sim-racing genre remains to be seen.