Forza ( , ; Italian for "force" and "strength") is a racing video game series for Xbox consoles and Microsoft Windows published by Xbox Game Studios.
The franchise is primarily divided into two ongoing titles. The original Forza Motorsport series developed by American developer Turn 10 Studios focuses on primarily simulation racing around a variety of both real and fictional tracks, and seeks to emulate the performance and handling characteristics of many real-life production, modified, and racing cars. The Forza Horizon series developed by British developer Playground Games features more arcade-style racing while maintaining a toned down version of Motorsports simulation physics. Horizon revolves around a music and racing festival called the "Horizon Festival" and features open world environments set in fictional representations of real-world areas in which players may freely roam and participate in racing events.
Apart from Motorsport and Horizon, Forza has also seen two since-discontinued mobile and computer free-to-play spin-offs; Forza Street (2019–2022), a drag racing-style game set in Miami, and Forza Customs (2023–2025), a tile-matching video game based on car customization. Both spin-offs were initially released as independent games before being rebranded as Forza titles.
The franchise has sold 16 million copies as of December 2016 and has garnered critical acclaim.
History
Turn 10 Studios was established in 2001 by Microsoft, under its Microsoft Game Studios division, to develop a series of racing games, which later became known as Forza, as the Xbox rival to Gran Turismo for PlayStation. At the time of the studio's establishment, most staff had experience in publishing games, such as Project Gotham Racing and Golf 4.0, but had not been involved in game development. The first Forza Motorsport was designed to showcase the technological capabilities of Microsoft's first console, the original Xbox, including its Xbox Live online multiplayer network. From the start, Turn 10's approach to the series has been to broaden its appeal to the general audience and not limit it to racing enthusiasts, passionately highlighting car culture along the way. Also integral to the series' development is the considerable amount of research put into the race cars' handling, sometimes involving professional race teams as of Formula One and NASCAR.
Every Forza title includes an artificial neural network used by its AI racers, called Drivatars, a portmanteau of driver and avatar. Drivatars were developed and designed by Microsoft Research Cambridge to learn and adapt to the player's driving. In early Forza titles, the Drivatars ran on a Bayesian neural network, which calculates possible solutions to a problem and their probabilities based on player data collected from previous races before selecting the one with the highest confidence value. Such a problem may be reaching a certain turn, at which point the appropriate angle at which to turn and the amount of pressure on the accelerator must be determined. Initially, the only way to share the learned Drivatars was to copy them onto Xbox Memory Units for use by other Xbox consoles. Since Forza Motorsport 5, the Drivatars have used a reinforcement learning paradigm, and have recorded racing data of all players connected to the cloud as part of the Xbox Network. In this paradigm, the Drivatars track the player's car position and speed and the consistency of the behavior and guess their turn angle and speed for a given segment, enabling the Drivatars to infer solutions for courses the player had not yet raced on and input for cars the player had not yet raced with. The data is then uploaded to the cloud to update the Drivatar behavior, and the new Drivatars are then downloaded to other Xbox consoles. Each upload is timestamped, and older uploads are treated with less confidence. There have been concerns that players could abuse the system to rubber-band the Drivatars' AI back to them, but Turn 10 has stated that the only thing that is rubber-banded are their cars, whose performance is slightly modified based on how far they are ahead of or behind the player. Turn 10 inserted a layer of control between player and AI inputs that allows for the developers to modify Drivatar behavior so as to prevent unexpected results.
Initially, Turn 10 designed models for cars and tracks using commercial off-the-shelf software such as 3D Studio Max. Today, it develops and uses a proprietary 3D modelling software called Fuel that allows multiple artists to work on the same model simultaneously, primarily those for cars and racing tracks. Due to increasing complexity of video games, it took six months for four people to design a single car model for Xbox One versions of Forza, so Turn 10 came to rely on car manufacturers to share CAD files, scan real-life cars, or send out a photographer to take hundreds or thousands of photographs of newly launched cars.
Playground Games was co-founded in 2009 in Leamington Spa, England, by Gavin Raeburn, Trevor Williams, and Ralph Fulton, all former employees of Codemasters. Raeburn was known for his role in developing critical hits such as the Dirt and TOCA series, but he became inspired by the open world environment of Test Drive Unlimited, and so left Codemasters feeling that it lacked the resources to fulfill his ambitions. Other members of Playground have included former employees of Bizarre Creations, Black Rock Studio, and Sony Liverpool—all racing game companies of the United Kingdom. At the same time, Turn 10 Studios began seeking out businesses in hopes of finding one willing to expand and branch out its franchise. At E3 2010, he and Williams offered Turn 10 a concept of an open-world Forza Motorsport in exchange for resources, to which Turn 10 agreed. Playground then developed what was to become Forza Horizon, collaborating with and closely backed by Turn 10. Playground Games had had a strong relationship as a third-party developer with Microsoft Studios, but it was only in a June 10 conference at E3 2018 that the company announced its acquisition by Microsoft.
Until 2019, each installment of the franchise series had alternated on a biennial basis; the Motorsport entries were released in odd-numbered years, while the Horizon entries were released in even-numbered years. This pattern was altered due to the absence of a new Motorsport game in 2019. In 2025, Forza Horizon 5 was announced and slated for release on Sony's PlayStation 5 console in Q1/Q2 2025 as part of Microsoft Gaming's ongoing plans to distribute their first-party library on multiple platforms, marking the first time the franchise has shipped on a non-Xbox console. In July 2025, Turn 10 Studios was reported to have lost almost half of its then-current workforce amidst layoffs being conducted at Microsoft Gaming ahead of the new financial year. Shortly thereafter, reports anticipated that the developer would be reorganized into a support studio for future Forza Horizon entries. This was later confirmed in a blog post by Turn 10 Studios in December 2025, which announced that Forza Motorsport would receive no further content updates, though its servers would remain active. While this concludes active development for the current title, Microsoft Gaming leadership has clarified that the Forza Motorsport franchise remains a parked asset rather than a discontinued one, leaving the series long-term future open for future strategic re-engagement.
ForzaTech ForzaTech is the proprietary video game engine created by Turn 10 Studios. It is the main engine used for the Forza series. The game engine was trademarked by Microsoft in 2015 and has since been used to develop current Forza games, as well as the Fable reboot.
Titles Motorsport TitleYearPlatformPCXBOXX360XONEXSX/S Forza Motorsport (2005) 2005 Backwards compatible Forza Motorsport 2 2007 Forza Motorsport 3 2009 Forza Motorsport 4 2011 Forza Motorsport 5 2013 Backwards compatible Forza Motorsport 6 2015 The PC edition was released as a free to play special edition titled Forza Motorsport 6: Apex. Backwards compatible Forza Motorsport 7 2017 Backwards compatible Forza Motorsport (2023) 2023 Notes
Forza Motorsport (2005)
Forza Motorsport was released on May 3, 2005, and is the first installment in the Forza Motorsport series. It is the only title in the series to be released on the original Xbox console. It features 231 cars and racetracks from 15 real-world and fictional locations. Common elements established by this game for future Forza titles include effects of damage on car performance, a paint job and decal editor, the ability to tune one's car and purchase upgrades using in-game credits won at previous races, and assist functions that make driving easier but at the cost of bonus end-of-race credits. It also supported online multiplayer via Xbox Live, as have all of its successors. The Honda NSX and a tuned Nissan 350Z are the cover vehicles. It is playable on the Xbox 360 via backwards compatibility.
Forza Motorsport 2 (2007)
The sequel to Forza Motorsport and the first Xbox 360 title in the series, Forza Motorsport 2, was released on May 29, 2007. It features a total of 349 cars and 23 different circuits from twelve locations. The series' support for force feedback first appears in this installment (Microsoft's Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel was designed to work with the game and support that feature). Car customization is also expanded; there are about 50 percent more parts and upgrades than in the previous installment, up to 4,100 vinyls can be applied to any car, and cars can be sold online with custom skins for in-game credits in the game's new auction house. The system that groups cars into letter-based classes based on their performance, expressed as a numerical performance index, now takes into account changes to one's car that make it more or less powerful, raising or lowering the index and possibly reclassifying the car. Prior to the game's release, Microsoft launched Forza Motorsport Showdown, a four-part TV miniseries on Speed. The show was produced by Bud Brutsman and hosted by Lee Reherman. A tuned Nissan 350z is the cover vehicle.
Forza Motorsport 3 (2009)
Forza Motorsport 3, released on October 27, 2009, includes more than 400 cars from 50 manufacturers and about 100 race track variations. Sport utility vehicles and stock cars make their debut in this game's car roster. The game introduces more optional assists aimed at making driving less challenging for less-experienced players. One of them is the rewind feature, which allows the player to turn back time to fix any previous mistake made on the track. Auto-braking brakes the player's car to prevent it from skidding off the track at turns, and the auto-tuner automatically tunes the car's aspects. The career mode has been revised for this edition of Forza Motorsport to contain 250 events, some of which involve two new modes: drag racing and drifting. It is also the first game in the franchise to feature a cockpit camera, as well as the ability to capture, edit, and share clips of gameplay. The Audi R8 is the cover vehicle.
Forza Motorsport 4 (2011)
For Forza Motorsport 4, which was released on October 11, 2011, Turn 10 Studios partnered with BBC's Top Gear to get Jeremy Clarkson to provide commentary for the new Autovista mode, which allows players to explore a certain selection of cars in great detail. The game is also the first in the franchise to utilize the Kinect sensor. Players can utilize the sensor to turn their head to either side, and the game dynamically follows in a similar motion, turning the game camera to the side. It is the final Forza Motorsport released for Xbox 360. The 2009 Ferrari 458 is the cover vehicle.
Forza Motorsport 5 (2013)