Forza Motorsport General Discussion Thread

[urmie]

I interpreted the DF video as basically saying "We had our hands totally full rebuilding the engine to be easily updated on the fly, rebuilding all of the 20 tracks for the new physics and just getting all of the 500 car models (most of which were already created but needed revision) into the game working with the physics, tyre model, new upgrades, shaders, textures and lighting of FM2023. We didn't even get RTGI incorporated yet".

So in my opinion they simply didn't have the time to rework those 10-20 old models, they were too busy with all the other stuff. It's a time versus benefit tradeoff they made.

That sounds like a good interpretation and I was going by that guy's direct answer.

From my understanding, there will not be a FM2 (at least this gen), they built this to be continuously updated over time, so there is plenty of time to get those corrected. Afterall, it's about 10-20 models. FH5 car models get "corrected" via patches, I guess FM could do the same. Let's hope they do.

 

[Bogie 19th]

Besides Game Pass and continued sales of the game (which dwindles as time goes on), how do they expect to make money on the game for the rest of the generation? How do they continue payroll? Since they said they are not developing a sequel this gen, I guess I don't understand how this GaaS will work for them if the cars and tracks DLC are free.

 

[ImaRobot]

Besides Game Pass and continued sales of the game (which dwindles as time goes on), how do they expect to make money on the game for the rest of the generation? How do they continue payroll? Since they said they are not developing a sequel this gen, I guess I don't understand how this GaaS will work for them if the cars and tracks DLC are free.

Hard to say. Outright sales doesn't seem to be as major of a metric that anyone goes by as it seems to have shifted to the amount of players/player retention as of the last few years. Horizon is obviously the better seller of the two, but even then, the vast majority of players are more likely to be playing it with their subscription to game pass rather than buying their own physical/digital copies.

I'm curious how the revenue gets split there and if its somehow divvied out to all the developers that are on it or not. Something I always wondered about.

 

[UKMikey]

Hard to say. Outright sales doesn't seem to be as major of a metric that anyone goes by as it seems to have shifted to the amount of players/player retention as of the last few years. Horizon is obviously the better seller of the two, but even then, the vast majority of players are more likely to be playing it with their subscription to game pass rather than buying their own physical/digital copies.

I'm curious how the revenue gets split there and if its somehow divvied out to all the developers that are on it or not. Something I always wondered about.

Xbox developers: Please MS, sir, could I have a crumb of GamePass revenue...

I guess it'd make sense to divide it proportionally based on GP player number metrics, but what do I know? 🤷🏽

 

[McLaren]

I was hoping we would get a 2024 Mustang in some form, be is standard, GT or GTD. I assume it's probably too new?

As far as I've seen, The Crew Motorfest is the only major game it's making its debut on. So, it's likely somewhere down the pipeline for T10 given their history with Ford.

 

[BOK]

The DF video provides some insight into (maybe) why they seem to dislike giving unique interior colors to cars that have very goofy colors, such as various TVR's and even the Wagoneer from FH3. Their materials library is shared between all cars, so there are actually very few assets unique to any singular car. This also may be why the r390 road car doesn't have its proper red interior. Still though, loving the increased transparency here and it's far better than what was going on in the FM5 days.

I reckon each model in GT is bespoke which sounds great in theory until you find out it takes 9 months to make a model. Honestly id rather have a shared texture library like forza does and have slight worse models if it means more cars be added quicker

 

[AttackDickie]

Besides Game Pass and continued sales of the game (which dwindles as time goes on), how do they expect to make money on the game for the rest of the generation? How do they continue payroll? Since they said they are not developing a sequel this gen, I guess I don't understand how this GaaS will work for them if the cars and tracks DLC are free.

Surely the budget they were given took this into account and despite Horzion, I still think it's a console seller for some, it was for me at least.

 

[skazz]

Besides Game Pass and continued sales of the game (which dwindles as time goes on), how do they expect to make money on the game for the rest of the generation? How do they continue payroll? Since they said they are not developing a sequel this gen, I guess I don't understand how this GaaS will work for them if the cars and tracks DLC are free.

Take a look at FH5... In the first year the hall of fame unique player count didn't break 20 million. Yet just recently they announced 33 million hall of fame unique players.

That's a heck of a lot of users added in year 2, either through sales or (more likely) Gamepass.


Obviously Microsoft pays vendors to be on Gamepass, presumably either based on the # downloads of the games or # hours played and # unique users. That means Forza Horizon 5 has got some huge revenues, since those numbers are a console record.

FM2023 will follow the same pattern. Full price sales at launch, reduced price sales after that, with Gamepass users coming as a steady stream. I have no doubt it won't get anywhere near FH5's 33 million players on the game's Hall of Fame after 2 years, but even half that number would be a big success.

 

[TheStigGt3]

This is the discussion thread for an article on GTPlanet:

Forza Motorsport Launches Spring 2023, on Xbox Series and PC​

Turn 10 has finally revealed new details for the upcoming Forza Motorsport, including an official launch window: Spring 2023.

Im wondering if its worth the wait.

 

[SloGrumpyDad]

I am hoping Centrifugal Supercharger is nerfed so we can have some parody otherwise it is just going to be the dame META cars. That is my very very few worries.

 

[whannel]

Besides Game Pass and continued sales of the game (which dwindles as time goes on), how do they expect to make money on the game for the rest of the generation? How do they continue payroll? Since they said they are not developing a sequel this gen, I guess I don't understand how this GaaS will work for them if the cars and tracks DLC are free.

5 cars and $500k game credit towards a car,
5 cars (Forza Editions) and double game points,
30 (one weekly) cars,
and 8 racing cars...

...is £30ish as a bundle now, probably more separately (while upgrading cars looks to intentionally take a lot of time/effort), with aspirations to take Xbox cloud gaming to 3 billion players seems to be their plan? Expect there may be more paid content, as well as the free stuff like FH5 just did with some free Italian cars, charging for better ones.

 

[UKMikey]

I am hoping Centrifugal Supercharger is nerfed so we can have some parody otherwise it is just going to be the dame META cars. That is my very very few worries.

If they really can get the AI right - or at least the top-end AI they use to determine the classes - there should be fewer meta cars since these are mostly just vehicles their bots don't know how to drive. There's at least some potential for improvement over previous Forzas.

 

[PJTierney]

Take a look at FH5... In the first year the hall of fame unique player count didn't break 20 million. Yet just recently they announced 33 million hall of fame unique players.

That's a heck of a lot of users added in year 2, either through sales or (more likely) Gamepass.


Obviously Microsoft pays vendors to be on Gamepass, presumably either based on the # downloads of the games or # hours played and # unique users. That means Forza Horizon 5 has got some huge revenues, since those numbers are a console record.

FM2023 will follow the same pattern. Full price sales at launch, reduced price sales after that, with Gamepass users coming as a steady stream. I have no doubt it won't get anywhere near FH5's 33 million players on the game's Hall of Fame after 2 years, but even half that number would be a big success.

Keep in mind that Microsoft owns Turn 10 and Playground Games.

The games themselves don’t need to be profitable so long as people stay on Game Pass or buy consoles to play.

That and Microsoft has the infinity money cheat on.

Their studios aren’t dealing with the same sorts of KPIs as a third party developer, even if the game is on Steam or DLC gets upsold to players.

 

[Famine]

This is the discussion thread for an article on GTPlanet:

All the New Tracks Coming to Forza Motorsport at Launch​

With just under four weeks to go until Forza Motorsport hits shelves (and Game Pass), Turn 10 has been releasing information on what content players can expect at launch...

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Great DF video and kudos to John for asking about the older cars. The answer given was unfortunate though. Outside "materials", "lighting" and "shading", the guy did not say "rebuilt from the ground up" on the actual models, so it will be the same car models from older generations. I really don't understand this decision from Chris/Dan here. How do you rebuild the entire game but not the cars? It's not even alot and we don't need them at launch. They literally outsourced to a new company to do the 3D models a year or two ago. Just have them go through the list of cars, release them later on. Heck, bundle it with the DLC tracks, make some campaign races from them, good marketing.

As for the this new "built not bought" mantra from Chris Esaki, well that used to be the original ethos of Forza (and others), car culture. Taking your everyday car and building it up to win races. But, Turn 10 and others turned away from that by focusing more on the supercars/hypercars, the Ferraris, Lambos, etc. That's where the whole collecting thing came from. Why not introduce more NORMAL cars instead? You're telling me manufacturers like Buick and others that have 3 or less cars, don't have more to offer from their history? Those neglected manufacturers should be "built up" along with the popular cars. We can have the best of both. If they are going by the official Forza forum "most requested cars" thread, then I guess that'll never happen.

The reason they haven't changed them is that, up until now, outside of a few people complaining on message boards its not a very visible problem and likely 85% of their player base wouldn't know the difference. Its a pragmatic business decision and they have, at least until this point, made the call that its not worth the investment to fix. Whether they update the Evo VI or not is not going to impact the buy / not buy calculus for an even greater percentage of potential players...probably 95%+. They would have to want to do it...and based on how conspicuously they showed off that Evo in FM promo vidoes...I suspect they don't really care or the upper management / marketing teams aren't savy enough to understand the issue. Actually, considering that nobody at T10 is doing this modeling first hand, it could be that nobody is fully aware of the problem. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if his non-answer was simply because he was dodging a question he didn't have enough information to respond to.

All that being said, now that they ARE facing questions and outright criticism about it from people with genuine reach, they might be compelled to actually fix the issue.

 

[Famine]

Oh, I forgot... I made this loose track map of Circuit Hakone based on the radar in the tutorial video. It's not easy as the radar changes size as the car changes speed, but this is roughly it:

 

[turk1993]

Oh, I forgot... I made this loose track map of Circuit Hakone based on the radar in the tutorial video. It's not easy as the radar changes size as the car changes speed, but this is roughly it:

View attachment 1287033

 

[Beebo]

Oh, I forgot... I made this loose track map of Circuit Hakone based on the radar in the tutorial video. It's not easy as the radar changes size as the car changes speed, but this is roughly it:

View attachment 1287033

Hmm...Hakone really wasn't the highly technical track I was hoping it would be, maybe the post-launch fantasy tracks will be more interesting though, there's still hope!

 

[TheOE]

Hmm...Hakone really wasn't the highly technical track I was hoping it would be, maybe the post-launch fantasy tracks will be more interesting though, there's still hope!

Looking at the gameplay there seem to be larger and smaller circuits. So it’s just one of multiple layouts. Grand oak also uses an easy layout during the first events, but also has a more technical one

 

[Famine]

Looking at the gameplay there seem to be larger and smaller circuits. So it’s just one of multiple layouts.

Yes, I mention that in the article above - there's a couple of bits in particular that jump out as "track also goes this way".

 

[SU_Tempest]

I interpreted the DF video as basically saying "We had our hands totally full rebuilding the engine to be easily updated on the fly, rebuilding all of the 20 tracks for the new physics and just getting all of the 500 car models (most of which were already created but needed revision) into the game working with the physics, tyre model, new upgrades, shaders, textures and lighting of FM2023. We didn't even get RTGI incorporated yet".

So in my opinion they simply didn't have the time to rework those 10-20 old models, they were too busy with all the other stuff. It's a time versus benefit tradeoff they made.

You know what, fair. If that's the real story behind "built from the ground up" then it's probably safe to assume what they really spent all that time developing wasn't so much one game meant to blow everyone away, but a solid base for something to update and maybe work on sequels with. And all things considered, that's the way to go. There are better things to worry about than a handful of models that haven't received the corrections they should.

It's still a whole new iteration of ForzaTech with a whole new physics engine that needs to prove itself to a playerbase that, if they didn't see Forza Horizon 4 and 5 to get a feel of what's coming next (if not in the physics, at least in the cars), really hasn't had anything to sink their teeth in for 6 years. In a certain sense, what's been probably truly rebuilt from the ground up might be what you can't immediately see, that being physics and resulting car feel in general. Even if I feel like they could have picked a better tagline to open us with. "Built not bought" or some variation thereof would have been immediately more thematic with what they're trying to achieve.

I'll say, though... if they knew, why in the world they picked that Evo 6 to showcase one track may well remain One of Nature's Mysteries™. It won't bother me to play with, but yeah, from a marketing perspective that's a blunder.

But casting that aside, it does seem like they've got something going on, and I'm sure FM will receive the refining it needs over time.

 

[slthree]

I'm amused by comments like "what have they done for the last 6 years? This is a coat of paint slapped on Forza 7"

I've consumed nearly everything the studio has shared and it seems to me they've done plenty!!!

I'm including a screenshot from my son in law. Some of you know he used to be a racer. He's hyper critical of anything not realistic in a racing game. Take note of his comment on the sound

 

[mikejones1]

Yes, I mention that in the article above - there's a couple of bits in particular that jump out as "track also goes this way".

short circuit will cut here looks like

 

[Vitesh Patel]

The new footage looks good, I do have a question about the AI though. They've gone to great lengths to say, no rubber banding, no tricks, no shenanigans when it comes to the AI.

However, in the first race in the Civic, the car that finishes in P2 has a fastest lap 1 second quicker than the player...if there's no rubber banding (and I don't recall seeing them make a mistake and spin off) what gives?

I appreciate it's a preview build and the game isn't final, but this looks suspiciously like rubber banding...

 

[UKMikey]

I appreciate it's a preview build and the game isn't final, but this looks suspiciously like rubber banding...

Or the other three laps were slower and less consistent than the player's?

 

[PJTierney]

Oh, I forgot... I made this loose track map of Circuit Hakone based on the radar in the tutorial video. It's not easy as the radar changes size as the car changes speed, but this is roughly it:

View attachment 1287033

Give the corners funny names and they may make it into a trailer 😁

 

[Vitesh Patel]

Or the other three laps were slower and less consistent than the player's?

Could be, but they'd need wildly different lap times for that to track - across most of the competition in that race. I still smell a rat...

 

[MagpieRacer]

Could be, but they'd need wildly different lap times for that to track - across most of the competition in that race. I still smell a rat...

Or, as has been mentioned a couple times, it isn’t finalised AI. It’s been stressed by the devs and the previewers playing it.

 

[LumpiestFish]

Give the corners funny names and they may make it into a trailer 😁

I suspect those corner names might even be in the game too. I noticed during the free practice gameplay some of the time mini sectors on Grand Oak actually had names, so I could actually see your names being implemented into the game as well.

 

[PJTierney]

I suspect those corner names might even be in the game too. I noticed during the free practice gameplay some of the time mini sectors on Grand Oak actually had names, so I could actually see your names being implemented into the game as well.

I doubt the meme names made it into the game. I suspect it was a third party video editor finding the first thing on google.

Corner of Death is iconic though, I caused some massive pileups there.