Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer did offer some updates, though. He reaffirmed during the showcase the launch of Fable for 2026 alongside Gears of War: E-Day (previously rumored) and the next Forza. There was also the tease of a classic that’s been with Xbox since the beginning making a return, which could be teasing the rumored Halo: Combat Evolved remake.

It doesn’t address the other missing titles, but the year is only half-done. What’s most interesting is Forza – Spencer didn’t specify whether this is a new Forza Horizon or a new Forza Motorsport. Time will tell, so stay tuned for more announcements and updates.

In the meantime, Xbox (and other platform) players can look forward to The Outer Worlds 2 on October 29th. Check out the latest trailer here.

The studio has stated, however, that both of the games will still be fully playable offline. Turn 10 states that it made the decision because of the age of both games, and the fact that both titles had small player populations.

It is also worth noting that, while it is no longer possible to buy the first two Forza Horizon games, those who did purchase them can freely download them again to play single-player content.

Online features for more recent games in the Forza Horizon franchise—specifically 3 and upwards—will continue to be available and the studio doesn’t seem to have plans to change that soon.

Other veterans joining the studio include executive producer Tom Butcher (former lead producer at Playground), content director Gareth Harwood, audio director Fraser Strachan and CTO Matt Craven. It also sees Elly Marshall, former design director at EA, joining as UX/UI director. Ben Penrose joins as art director, having recently been at Sharkmob but also having experience at Playground Games. Harinder Sangha serves as COO, with her previous experience including Sega Hardlight and Sumo Leamington.

“[In 2021] we shipped Forza Horizon 5, which was a thrill to work on,” said Brown. “As much as I had an amazing journey at Playground, I was asking myself, what’s next? Do I stick with this fun, good job? Or do I look for other opportunities? This opportunity came up. I was asked what my vision would be for a new studio…and it was lucky I had an idea in mind.”

Though there are only ten employees, Maverick aims to grow to 140 over time. Stay tuned for more details on its first game in the future.

#12. FORZA STREET

An easy pick for the lowest spot in this list. Forza Motorsport has consistently offered excellent simulation mechanics, while Horizon is an incredible arcade series, but Forza Street is really neither here nor there. It doesn’t help that it’s a mobile-only title, which means that it’s lacking in the sort of mechanical perfection, polish, and visual fidelity the series has traditionally been known for. It’s an extremely simplified experience that doesn’t do much of anything you’d expect a Forza game to do. Thankfully, it’s not technically a mainline entry, so it’s rather easy to completely overlook.

#11. FORZA MOTORSPORT 5

As the first Forza game to release for the Xbox One, Forza Motorsport 5 was well-positioned to really leverage the new console to deliver an excellent experience, but the game turned out to be a bit of a letdown, especially coming off of the excellent Forza Motorsport 4. It looked great, the audio design was typically excellent, new features like Drivatars and Forzavista were introduced, and the cars felt really good to drive, but the game was crippled by a shockingly small roster of vehicles and a disappointing lack of track variety at launch.

#10. FORZA MOTORSPORT

The one that started it all. The first Forza Motorsport’s legacy is impossible to oversell, and for fans of racing sims, this was a landmark release. At a time when Gran Turismo ruled the roost, Forza Motorsport came along and defied all expectations by not only delivering an excellent racing sim, but one that was genuinely great enough to be able to go up against Gran Turismo and provide some meaningful competition. Being 16 years old and having been improved upon by numerous sequels, it’s a little hard to go back to now, but the game deserves massive props for setting down solid foundations for the franchise.

#9. FORZA MOTORSPORT 6

After the backlash that Forza Motorsport 5 received at launch for its issues, Turn 10 Studios knew they needed to come back strong with a proper statement- Forza Motorsport 6 wasn’t exactly a strong statement that could make people sit up and take notice, but it was an improvement. The selection of vehicles and tracks was much better, the visuals were beautiful, and the career mode and online were a blast. Mechanically, Forza Motorsport 6 wasn’t as polished in terms of its sim aspects as some other games in the series, which made it a bit of an inconsistent experience, but by and large, this was a really good game.

#8. FORZA HORIZON

Forza Horizon was an interesting and risky experiment for Microsoft’s racing series. After having made a name for itself with four excellent racing sims, with Forza Horizon, the series decided to do something different, delivering a more arcade style of racing in an open world environment. It’s fair to say that the experiment worked out, thanks to excellent driving mechanics and a world that was an absolute joy to simply drive around in. The first Forza Horizon has been improved upon by all of its successors, so by default it feels a little aged, but even so, it’s still a blast to play even today.

#7. FORZA MOTORSPORT 2

Forza Motorsport 2 had a lot of expectations to live up to, not only because it had to build on the success of its groundbreaking predecessor, but also because it was the series’ debut on the Xbox 360, and it succeeded very nearly in everything that it set out to do. It looked and sounded gorgeous, its tracks and cars were brimming with details, the roster of vehicles was vast and varied, and the mechanical polish and sheer range of customization options in the game were staggering, especially for its time.

#6. FORZA HORIZON 2

Forza Horizon 2 didn’t have the novelty factor of the first Horizon game, which meant it didn’t make nearly as big of a splash as its predecessor did, but it was more than a worthy successor, and an excellent evolution of the series’ open world arcade racing branch. The freedom and arcade-style racing that Horizon 1 established were taken to even greater heights in the sequel, while the open world featured here was also absolutely gorgeous and just a pleasure to drive around in. Sadly, the Xbox 360 version of the game as a bit of a mess, to the extent that it almost felt like a completely different game.

#5. FORZA MOTORSPORT 3

As great as the first two Forza games were, it was with Forza Motorsport 3 that the series really came into its own. Turn 10 established the formula that the series would continue to be built on for years to come, and it was with Forza Motorsport 3 that the franchise really solidified its identity and emerged as a true and proper contender to the racing sim throne. Excellent cars, tracks, driving mechanics, career mode, and more came together to deliver what was and still remains one of the best racing sims of its time.

#4. FORZA MOTORSPORT 7

Forza Motorsport hit a relative slump in its Xbox One era, but at least it ended strong. Forza Motorsport 7 wasn’t perfect, no – the microtransactions at launch, for instance, were a bit of nuisance – but in most ways that matter, this might just be one of the best renditions of the Forza formula. Visually spectacular, absolutely overflowing with a ridiculously large selection of vehicles, packed full of content that could keep you busy for dozens upon dozens of hours, Forza Motorsport 7 was a great return to form for the series. Driving mechanics were more polished and refined than ever before, the career mode was excellent, the progression system was genuinely engaging, and the introduction of dynamic weather was an exciting new addition.

#3. FORZA HORIZON 3

Like Forza Motorsport, Forza Horizon really hit its stride with its third instalment. The first two Horizon games are spectacular open world racers though, so that should tell you something about how good the third one was. Australia was an excellent open world setting, not just in terms of size, but also in terms of variety, while the driving mechanics were also better and smoother than ever. It was with Forza Horizon 3 that many started wondering whether the spinoff Forza series had surpassed the mainline games, and it’s easy to see why- this is easily one of the best racing games ever made.

#2. FORZA MOTORSPORT 4

The absolute pinnacle of the Forza Motorsport line of games. Turn 10 kept on consistently improving on the formula with each progressive game in the series’ earlier years, and with Forza Motorsport 4, ended up crafting a veritable masterpiece. Excellent variety in tracks and cars, a ridiculous level of detail that exhibited a true love for the craft, the most polished driving mechanics the series had ever had up until that point- for all of these reasons and more, Forza Motorsport 4 is not only the best Motorsport game, it might even arguably be the best racing sim ever made. It’s that good.

#1. FORZA HORIZON 4

When Forza Horizon spun off from the mainline series, no one could have expected that it would go on to surpass the Motorsport line of games. By the time Horizon 3 came out, the subseries did start hinting at that level of quality- and with Horizon 4, it just blew everyone out of the water. Open world Britain is beautiful, massive, full of varied sights and sounds, and densely packed with a vast variety of consistently enjoyable activities, from excellent racing events to buying houses to competing against Drivatars to just aimlessly driving around the open world. Add to that the ingenious seasons mechanic, which completely changes the world in fundamental ways, and you also get an insane amount of dynamism in the experience. Forza Horizon 4 is easily one of the best racing games ever made, if not the best, and we’d be lucky to see Horizon 5 coming anywhere close to that level.

Forza Horizon 1

Microsoft really dominated the gaming landscape with the Xbox 360, which can be attributed to a far more developer-friendly system architecture that made it relatively easy to work with. While the PS3 did have an incredibly powerful Cell chip, it was extremely difficult to write code for and the hard limit on the distribution of memory between CPU and GPU made lives even more difficult for developers. Microsoft’s first-party produced a bunch of stellar games that showcased what the console was capable of, and Playground Games did exactly that with its debut title, the original Forza Horizon.

Releasing in 2012 right before 343 Industries dropped the system’s swansong exclusive Halo 4, Forza Horizon was incredibly well-received on account of its beautiful open-world and remarkably different feel from the simulation-oriented Forza Motorsport series. Utilizing an updated version of Turn10’s proprietary engine, Forza Horizon renders a crisp 720p image with a steady 30fps cap that rarely falters. Topping off the native 720p resolution is 4x MSAA anti-aliasing which ensures that any and all rough edges are smoothened out.

The original Forza Horizon is set in a fictionalized recreation of Colorado, and features some great draw distances for its time. The seemingly low level of details far off are smartly masked off by the motion blur, but the overall terrain looks a lot barren with a number of canyons and plains su. The original Forza Horizon does feature a relatively drab color palette as compared to its successors. While this is a mostly artistic choice incredibly common within the games of the time, some fans still swear that the game is all the better for it as these darker colors hide any inconsistencies with detailing that might crop up with the relatively weaker hardware.

Forza Horizon 2

Almost two years after the release of the first game, Playground returned with a sequel to its fan-beloved IP. Interestingly enough, Forza Horizon 2 stands to this day as the only cross-gen release in the release. Of course, the added strain of porting the game over to a last-gen machine means that sacrifices need to be made. Sumo Digital did a smart job at nailing the basics right, with the Xbox 360 version of Forza Horizon 2 running extremely well with a solid 30 fps cap. While the game did utilize the original Forza Horizon’s engine written for the Xbox 360, it still looks and feels similar to its bigger brother on the Xbox One.

There are a lot of improvements that players will notice while jumping from Forza Horizon to Forza Horizon 2. Running at a pristine resolution of 1080p, the game flaunts its high-resolution textures, reflections, and a bevy of post-processing effects that all serve to accentuate the now-brightly lit environments. Given the Xbox One boasts more than 10 times the memory of the Xbox 360, it’s quite obvious that the level of detail within the environmental assets themselves has also received a significant boost. The difference is quite stark actually, which can be easily seen from a simple comparison screenshot between the two games.

The  choice of Northern Italy as the setting has a lot of impact on the art direction, with terrestial variety being a noticeable step up from the original. There’s plenty of bloom during the daytime, and the game can look really gorgeous when all graphical cylinders fire in harmony. The samll roadside towns also have some interesting architecture, which all adds towards making its world more alive and beautiful.

In terms of performance, Forza Horizon 2 still runs at a mere 30 fps though, which rubbed many the wrong since Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport 5 ran at a steady 60 fps with arguably higher levels of details. Of course, there’s always the fact that Forza Horizon is an open world that requires rapid asset streaming as players are expected to be zooming across the lands in some of the speediest cars the series had to date while Forza Motorsport features static race-courses which allow the developers to optimize the environments accordingly, which by extension frees up the GPU to pump more frames comfortably within a second.

Forza Horizon 3

After another gap spanning 2 years, Playground Games would return to release Forza Horizon 3. Setting foot outside the United States and Italy, the jump to a masterfully detailed rendition of Australia provides a great backdrop to a great graphical upgrade to the series. Much like the previous entry, Forza Horizon 3 ran at a resolution of native 1080p with a target of 30 fps, which in true Forza Horizon fashion rarely ever falters. It also features 4x MSAA anti-aliasing which creates a pristine-looking image that’s always a feast for the eyes to gorge on.

The jump to Australia as the setting has a lot of implications, with foliage being an integral part of the experience. The track is surrounded by vegetation more often than before, and the vegetation is also more dense and detailed than before. However, the increased level of detail has an unfortunate side-effect of making LOD swapping(or pop-in) more visisble and by extension, even distacting.

In true sequel fashion, there are many obvious improvements as well of course, with weather effects boasting higher-resolution textures and increased environmental draw distances than before. Forza Horizon 3 was also the series debut on the PC platform. Forza Horizon 3‘s PC port doesn’t seem to be an afterthought either, as it is filled with a pantheon of options that allow for tinkerers – such as myself – to find that perfect sweet spot between quality and performance.

Tests seem to suggest that the Xbox One version of the game uses presets similar to the PC port’s high setting – which is a testament to Playground’s excellent understanding of the hardware as running in with that target and visuals required a fairly beefy system at the time. Forza Horizon 3 also received an Xbox One X patch further down the line – as Playground’s and Turn10’s latest iterations of the Forza series became the posterchild to show off the raw grunt of the 6 teraflop beast.

The Xbox One X version bumps the game’s pixel count of the Xbox One version by 4 times to native 4K accompanied by the 4x MSAA found in the original, with a bunch of enhancements to its visuals that match the PC’s highest settings. Interestingly enough, some of the beefiest graphics cards of the time such as the GTX 1070 – would occasionally drop frames at near-identical settings, which served as the basis for comparison for the power of Microsoft’s most powerful console.

Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4 takes the series traditional Horizon festival and dumps it into a fictional representation of Great Britain, and is all the better for it. The main hook of Forza Horizon 4 are Seasons, which drastically change up the tracks, environments, and most importantly handling of vehicles. Developer Playground Games utilized a number of techniques that involve the use of satellite map data more than previous entries to get a better understanding of the topography of Britain, which allowed for a much richer and in-depth realization of the setting.

With 4 distinct seasons being the highly-touted factor for Forza Horizon 4, it stands to reason that the biggest changes come in the form of deformable terrain and associated weather effects receiving a big bump in quality. There are a number of new feature additions to the mix as well, with ambient occlusion and screen space reflections bringing some added royalty into the ever-expanding roster of cars screeching their tires across this gargantuan map. Of course, it still runs at a comfortable 30 fps on the Xbox One.

Given that Playground Games had access to Xbox One X development kits quite early on, Forza Horizon 4 runs at a steady 60fps on the upgraded machine – a series first for consoles. While it’s sure to knock down the resolution from pristine 4K down to 1080p, but it’s still better to have the novelty of choice nevertheless. Forza Horizon 4 on PC is expanded upon further from its predecessors, giving a bevy of options along with detailed performance benchmarking tools that can make tinkering a joy.

It’s still demanding to pull a 4K 60 fps at its highest settings on PC, but the game is noticeably much more optimized than before. The Xbox One version runs at the same mostly high settings as the PC port, while the Xbox One X achieves greater visual fidelity at 4 times the original’s resolution – matching which would require a beefy GPU such as the likes of a GTX 1070Ti.

Forza Horizon 5

This is the culmination of everything the series has been building towards – mechanically as well as graphically. Utilizing photogrammetry, Playground Games has managed to achieve an unparalleled level of complexity in the materials and meshes used in its environment, which is topped by foliage that looks to be much denser and reactive than ever before. There’s also a revamped volumetric lighting system, which adds a lot to the overall presentation as the atmosphere looks noticeably thicker than its previous renditions especially when the newly-added dust storms come into view. All in all, many of these techniques lend a huge sense of realism to the world at large, which is a fantasy that Playground’s premier franchise has constantly strived to achieve more of.

An interesting point in terms of graphics is that Forza Horizon 5 doesn’t actually have ray-traced reflections, though fans may be forgiven to think so given the high-resolution screen space reflections found throughout car bodies. Ray-tracing is in the game but is only supported in ForzaVista on next-gen.

Forza Horizon 5 is targeting a 4K 30 fps target for the quality mode on the Xbox Series X, while the performance mode will supposedly knock down a few settings to get it running at 60 fps. Since this is going to be a cross-gen release built to support a wide variety of PC hardware and 4 distinct consoles, the engine is touted to be more scalable than before which should in theory ensure that each and every mode feels great to play.

With next gen right around the corner, all of us have all sorts of wishlists in our minds, and most of them, of course, are all about the thing that matters most- the games. There’s so many games we’d like to see on next-gen platforms, so many franchises we’d like to see making a return. In this feature, we’ll be talking about fourteen sequels to Microsoft-owned franchises that we’d like to see on the Xbox Scarlett, at one point or another.

Some of the games we’ll be mentioning will be obvious picks, the kind that will inevitably show up sooner rather than later, while others will be more out there, as hopes and dreams go. In all cases though, keep in mind that this is a wishlist, not a prediction list. With all that out of the way, let’s get started.

HALO WARS 3

Halo will, of course, be a major presence on Xbox Scarlett – it’s launching with the next big Halo title, after all – but we’d like to see more from the franchise on the console than just its mainline games. Halo Wars started as an interesting strategy offshoot, and though the first game was definitely a flawed one, it showed plenty of promise. Halo Wars 2 made good on a lot of its potential, and was a much better game than any of us were expecting it to be. Our hope is that Microsoft will continue to invest in this branch of Halo, and allow Halo Wars to continue its upward trajectory with a third game.

This has been quite a good year for Xbox so far, and Microsoft has talked about some of their plans for the future of the console and gaming, while Xbox head Phil Spencer has also spoken about the growing importance of Xbox to Microsoft. As we enter the fourth quarter of the year, Xbox’s GM of Marketing Aaron Greenberg discussed the company’s acquisitions of various studios ,which they had first announced at E3.

Greenberg talked to MCVUK about how the company was really serious in wanting to invest more into first-party studios, and this is what led to the acquisitions. He stated,”If you think about the teams we acquired, these folks are best in class, they make really high-quality games, but the games they make are very different to our existing franchises. Of course Playground is making Horizon, but they’re also going to have a second team making something entirely different. We have a centre of excellence in the UK, we have Rare, we now have Ninja Theory and Playground, and those teams can work together to share tech and infrastructure, that has a lot of benefits.”

In fact, it was a deliberate decision to focus on studios in the UK, since the government there has been “very supportive of the games industry.” Greenberg also went on to emphasize that these studios will remain creatively independent, while Microsoft is able to provide financial security and the required technology. He said, “This was first and foremost about finding the world’s greatest teams, who can bring new types of content to our first-party studios, and allow them to continue to operate independently. If you think about a game like Hellblade, how many big companies would have greenlit a game like that? But it’s brilliant and it addresses a lot of important issues. Those are the types of teams that really inspire us and it’s a privilege to be able to work with them. For them to become part of our team provides financial security, access to resources and tech capabilities, and still the creative independence to go and do what they want to do. These teams they would have never wanted to partner and work with us if that wasn’t part of the conditions. I think we have a good track record of doing that: look at Mojang, which has stayed independent and stayed focused.”

Overall, the past few months have been great for Microsoft and Xbox, and it looks like they are interested in continuing to invest more in first-party studios at some point. Greenberg stated, “It’s an exciting time, we’ve essentially doubled our creative studios overnight, and it just shows that commitment to invest more.” Let’s just hope for some good output in the not-so-distant future.

While motorbikes were actually featured in the reveal of Forza Horizon 4 on the Microsoft stag during their E3 presser on Sunday, they won’t actually be playable in the final game, the game’s director has revealed. Speaking to DualShockers, Turn 10 Studios’ Design Director John Knowles noted that while motorcycles are in the game, you can’t drive them, and they won’t be playable- which I know will crush at least some fans’ dreams.

“No, you can’t drive motorcycles, just to get that out of the way. It’s a showcase event. It’s a motocross stunt team you’re racing against just like you’ve raced against jets, planes, boats, and trains,” Knowles said. “We know some portion of our audience has wanted to see playable motorcycles. Maybe someday but not this game.”

Which is a bit of a bummer, I guess- but Playground Games have been very receptive to fan feedback, and their DLC tends to often get crazy and go beyond the scope of the original game. So who knows, maybe we will see motorbikes that we can drive in a future expansion for Forza Horizon 4. If not, then who knows, maybe we see them in a Forza Horizon 5 or something. All we know is, they won’t be playable in this game at launch- better luck next time, motorbike fans.

Forza Horizon 4 launches later this year, exclusively for Xbox One and PC.

Playground Games is best known as the developer behind the Forza Horizon games. According to some new information, the company could possibly be acquired by Microsoft. This is not that surprising given the close relationship the studio has enjoyed with Microsoft in the past.

In a PDF document posted on UK Government’s Companies House website, it was revealed that Keith Ranger Dolliger was made the new Director of Playground Games on May 29. Dolliger has worked as the  Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Business and Corporate Development at Microsoft for a long time now. He was also made Director of companies such as Rare, Lionhead, and others just before Microsoft acquired these companies. This suggests that an acquisition of Playground Games is imminent. The studio is said to be working on a number of games as of now, such as the next entry in the Forza Horizon series and an open world RPG.

It’s likely that we’ll get to know more about the games and about the company’s future at E3.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Helicopter Ride – Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

As annoying as the credits for each mission can be after a while, the long helicopter rides in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain can be excruciating. It’s pretty cool that you don’t have to suffer any loading times when in the open world but holy hell, does every helicopter ride, regardless of distance, have to be unskippable?