Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 2 will be releasing on the Xbox One (with Sumo Digital working on the Xbox 360 version) later this year, but unlike 2013’s Forza Motorsport 5 will be running at 1080p resolution and 30 FPS.
Creative director Ralph Fulton spoke to IGN about the same and stated that, “I think what we did on Horizon was demonstrate that, and this is really important, a locked frame rate that’s absolutely solid and never drops is the most important thing for our game. 30 [frames-per-second] actually enables us to realise that experience.
“I think I remember that’s always a hot-button topic, until a game comes out and people go, ‘Oh, this actually really works.’ But 1080p was an absolute must for us; it’s the benchmark for next-gen.”
The reason for the drop in frame rate is fairly obvious: Forza Horizon 2 is an open world game, unlike Forza Motorsport 5 which stuck to static tracks. “The biggest difference is that, obviously, we’re an open-world streaming game. We need to be able to drive in any direction at up to 270 miles an hour, if you’re gonna soup up a Veyron or something like that.
“So one of the big technical challenges that we had to face was making sure that we could stream in a world that is next-gen beautiful, but fast enough to keep up with the fastest car. That’s a huge tech challenge but it’s one that our guys just eat up.”
Forza Horizon 2 will be out in Q4 2014. Will it play as good as it looks? We’ll find out in the coming months.