The next great racing game after Forza Horizon 6 isn’t here — yet

It is wonderful how far the collection has come since 2012, when it launched as a derivative of Xbox circuit-racer Forza Motorsport — itself chasing the tails of PlayStation’s Gran Turismo — and a humble challenger to EA’s then massively fashionable Want for Velocity. All these video games now lie in Forza Horizon’s rear-view mirror. (Although the venerable Gran Turismo is not to be underestimated; Sony hasn’t reported gross sales figures for Gran Turismo 7, however Polygon understands it has offered very nicely and continues to take action.)

Forza Horizon’s enchantment is not laborious to know. It gives technically polished, accessible, entertainment-first racing in lovely open-world settings, with an enormous amount and number of stuff to do, and an enormous however well-curated catalog of real-world vehicles. Developer Playground Video games (now assisted by Forza Motorsport studio Flip 10) has formidable high quality management, and has simply achieved the uncommon feat of 4 consecutive video games with a 90-plus Metacritic score.

At this level, it is robust to see how Forza Horizon will be challenged. However it is going to be, as a result of there’s one factor the collection does not actually do. It does not innovate.

Whereas Playground is consistently refining and including to its method, it has arguably solely made two substantive modifications to it (each very profitable): the addition of full off-road free-roam in Forza Horizon 2, and the shift to a form of live-service-lite construction with seasonal weekly playlists launched in Forza Horizon 4.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Forza Horizon 6 is fantastic, however it’s the definition of a identified amount, and I’m wondering if it will have acquired the identical acclaim if it hadn’t been a comparatively lengthy four-and-a-half years for the reason that final one. I had assumed Playground wasn’t fixing what wasn’t damaged, however a latest interview with the studio’s former head suggests he was annoyed in his makes an attempt to maneuver the collection and the style ahead.

Gavin Raeburn was a senior producer at Codemasters, heading up Filth, Grid, and F1, when he left to kind Playground Video games in 2009. In 2022, after Playground’s acquisition by Microsoft and the discharge of Forza Horizon 5, Raeburn left to kind yet one more startup, Lighthouse Video games. (Lighthouse is predicated simply streets away from the Playground places of work in Royal Leamington Spa, and a brief drive from the Codemasters HQ in neighboring Southam.)

Chatting with Forbes back in April, Raeburn hinted that one purpose for his departure was Xbox’s unwillingness to countenance innovation and alter inside Forza Horizon. “I felt I’d gone so far as I might with Horizon,” he stated. “It was going to proceed to achieve success. It was going to be enjoyable to work on, however I needed to do extra, and I couldn’t actually try this at Xbox. I couldn’t add what I needed to Horizon. I couldn’t change it.”

In response to Forbes, Raeburn believes he has the method for “the subsequent era of racing video games,” which he is placing into place at Lighthouse; he promised it is going to be “simply as massive a leap as Horizon was from Filth 2.” The studio is funded by Chinese language big Tencent and staffed with Playground and Codemasters veterans.

It wasn’t simply conservatism at Xbox holding Playground and Forza again, Raeburn advised Forbes; there’s an inherent resistance to alter at any studio. He even advised that Playground has grown complacent in its success. “While you construct a studio, and also you construct tech, you construct it at a cut-off date,” he stated. “You construct a sure tradition, you construct the tech and know it is match for that function then, however over time it is not: Issues begin to unravel, issues set in stone, even a little bit of complacency, maybe.”

Raeburn did not share any of his massive concepts with Forbes. However he appeared assured that no person else, together with his previous staff at Playground, has them. What’s extra, he advised to Forbes that Playground and his different opponents in racing video games — he cites Ivory Tower, which makes The Crew for Ubisoft — are making “errors” Lighthouse will keep away from. “I would like them to maintain making them,” he stated.

Picture: Maverick Video games

Lighthouse is not the one ex-Playground studio hoping to take a pop at Forza Horizon’s hegemony. It is not even the one one in a five-mile radius. Maverick Video games, based by Forza Horizon 5 artistic director Mike Brown, is in close by Warwick. Maverick will soon unveil its own open-world driving game, regardless of shedding Amazon as a writer in February. The sport has a focus on storytelling — a dangerous wager for the style, and a hill many racing video games have died on earlier than. Elsewhere, Ivory Tower is prepping a brand new entry in its well-regarded collection The Crew, which noticed many PlayStation gamers by their Forza Horizon envy until last year.

However the likeliest supply of a Forza Horizon killer is 10 minutes’ stroll away from Playground, at Lighthouse. Raeburn as soon as had a imaginative and prescient for the way forward for racing video games and turned out to be useless proper. He claims he is performed it once more; I would not wager towards him.