It wasn’t too long ago that Turn 10 Studios made it clear that, surprisingly enough, they were not working on Forza Motorsport 8, and that everyone at the studio was instead 100% focused on supporting and updating Forza Motorsport 7. However, the developer has now confirmed that their focus has now shifted, and that they’re now working on a full-fledged sequel.
Speaking in their latest Forza Monthly update, Creative Director Dan Greenawalt confirmed that Forza Motorsport 8 is in early development, in the concept phases- which probably means that we won’t be seeing a new Forza release this year, and that Forza 8 is most likely going to be a next gen title.
“The weight of the team is shifting over to our next project,” said Greenwalt. “So we’re getting into that concept phase.”
What’s interesting, however, is that Turn 10 Studios are looking to change up their development methodology, and want to involve their fans and community with the game’s development a lot more right from the beginning- even in its current concept phase.
“In the past, that concept phase would be kind of subterranean,” Greenwalt said. “We’d kind of do it with ourselves, we’d work with our dev partners, and we’d bounce our concepts off ourselves. But we’re going to be doing it differently this time. We want to do it in public. We want to do it with our fans. Does that mean early rollouts? I don’t know. And that’s really what it comes down to: I don’t know.
“But the big news is the team is transitioning its weight. We’re moving our weight over to this new project we’re working on and we’re doing it in a new way. We can listen to the team, open conduit, we want our players to go to Discord, get involved with us, to really be part of this process with us, to make their voice heard. And we, together, will shape the future of automotive entertainment.”
It’s an interesting approach to development for sure, and Turn 10 have been shifting their focus to such an approach for some time now, most notably with Forza Motorsport 7’s post-launch support, during which time they would go on to significantly retool several aspects of the game. It should be interesting to see how they implement it with Forza Motorsport 8 even during its early development.
In related news, Turn 10 might also have inadvertently revealed Forza Street, a mobile-only game in the racing sim franchise being developed in conjunction with UK-based studio Electric Square. Read more on that through here.
