What to expect from Forza Motorsport updates in the first half of 2025.
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What to expect from Forza Motorsport updates in the first half of 2025.
To the Motorsport Community,
We love seeing your reaction and excitement to the updates we have been releasing. Between the return of fan favorite tracks such as Sunset Peninsula and Bathurst to features like Spectate, Drift Mode, and Challenge Hub – alongside the debut of Next Gen NASCAR and most recently,
new-to-Motorsport BMW cars – there has never been a better time to jump into Forza Motorsport.
We recently finalized our plan for the updates we will be making available to you in the first half of 2025. This includes a content update in May that will include a fan favorite track. Leading up to that, we will continue adding new-to-Motorsport cars and events into the game, themed around Daily Racers, Velocity, and Porsche Motorsport Icons. We will showcase these updates in more detail as part of our blogs alongside their release.
As we’ve been working through all this new content, we’ve also been continuing to look towards future updates. This means that our work on some of the features we previously announced for early 2025 may be re-evaluated as we complete our new plans. Until then over the next three months our updates will be new content only. That was a very difficult decision, however we are excited to continue to bring new content and experiences to you.
While we are working through our plans for the second half of the year, we hope you have fun playing the updates we’re working on for the next few months, and we look forward to seeing you on the track in Featured Multiplayer.
Andy Beaudoin, Forza Motorsport Game Director
Chris Esaki, Forza Motorsport Creative Director
Trevor Laupmanis, Forza Motorsport Executive Producer
Firstly, starting with the positive - making a honest statement like this to break the recent "silence " is welcome. And I note the 3 head men have all signed this, which also feels like "taking responsibility" knowing the resulting flack coming their way - "we're the ones in charge, blame us, its our decision" - that takes leadership and some guts in my view.
Also, re-evaluating new plans means nothing is set in stone yet, so there is still hope that something happens to cause a positive result in these internal discussions.
Unfortunately, my reading of this is negative in all other respects.
1. The track coming in May is probably already in progress, so they've decided to complete it for May release (it's a sunk cost). There's a possibility that this will be the last new track added. The best case scenario for this year, in my mind, is another track towards end of 2025.
2. The Tours will be planned months in advance, so again a lot of what is coming in those 3 Tours has already been licensed and paid for (I.e. its another sunk cost).
3. Anything not already completed from the previous roadmap is, I think, to be regarded as "gone" unless we hear otherwise. That includes the career rework/additions and sadly the Creative Hub. My instinct (nothing concrete just a guess) is that what is already in progress and can be easily completed, will come in May, but I think it's sensible to keep expectations for this very very low.
I'm just guessing here, but the recent silence has been noticed in private areas as well as public ones. Which may be relevant to my guess below:
There's almost nothing to go on here, but I'm wondering whether what has happened is:
1. There was a final concerted effort Q4 2024 to get player numbers up.
2. That hasn't worked
3. A lot of the staff that were still working on FM23 have been reassigned elsewhere , maybe FH6?, (or were included in this month's widely reported Microsoft layoffs?)
4. Skeleton crew is left remaining on FM23 to gradually work on completing the stuff already in progress.
Personally, I don't believe the delays in roadmap items are due to technical issues, I just think there's fewer people left working on the game to complete them.
If it's "new content" going forward, are we to assume all the cars will, in fact, be "built from the ground up"? Like literally brand spankin' new? If that's the case, then great! As we saw with the BMW update, some were new, but others were not. I didn't even realize until I checked the showroom that the 1995 BMW M5 wasn't in the game, shame.
I'm more curious about the career, are they now not gonna do it? Chris Esaki literally stated in his interviews they programmed this game to make adding in stuff easy. I'm not sure what the hold-up is in expanding the career. Nobody likes the FOMO stuff. Will they come up with something else? Like for Porsche, they could do like they did in FM6's expansion, which I thought was great.
As for the track, I don't see why they don't add additional layouts to already existing tracks like Le Mans or even the supposed Hakone Mountain Pass. If it's Fujimi, I'd take it would be like Sunset, a remake of the original so that it flows better.
In this case, "New content" means the 3 Featured Tours, whatever tweaks happen to multiplayer races/schedules and nothing else. The cars in those tours will probably continue to be a mix of returns, new to Motorsport, and maybe some new to Forza.
Anything outstanding from the previous roadmap is either gone or under active discussion internally whether it comes or not. You have to work on the basis, based on the statement, that nothing else is coming now unless they say it is coming in a future statement. It's a "clean slate" going forward.
Of course, assuming there's an Insiders test going on, some people already know what is in Daily Rivals next month. But even they won't know anything beyond that.
My final thoughts, we are not going to hear anything else until May, except for blogs in relation to the 3 Featured Tours. So I'm going to confine myself to comments on those 3 Tours going forward (until the next message from T10).
