We now have word that Forza Motorsport won’t be releasing for the first half of 2023.

This comes from Jeff Grubb in the latest episode of his video podcast, Jeff Grubb’s Game Mess. In his own words:

“That’s the thing. Every one of these games will be out in 12 months, right? That’s until the end of June.

What I’m hearing – I’m feeling pretty good about this after asking around, it does seem like Forza (Motorsport) is going to slip later into the year and it probably won’t be the first half of the year.

I don’t think that’s too surprising after hearing 2023. But I do wonder why they wouldn’t just come out, and say that now. Cuz it’s just going to be more pain later, right? When you’re going to have to rip the band-aid off?

Maybe there’s a chance that this isn’t accurate. But right now, it does seem like the game is coming a little bit later.”

Microsoft did not give a release window for Forza Motorsport in their Xbox Developer_Direct.

We did learn yesterday that the game was built from the ground up for the Xbox Series family of consoles. This means Forza Motorsport will follow its predecessor Forza Horizon 5 in taking full advantage of the capabilities of this generation of Xbox consoles. Expect no loading times, and especially Quick Resume. For those who own an Xbox Series X, Forza Motorsport should also impress with current generation performance standards of 4K at 60 FPS.

The Direct revealed that there will be a total of twenty environments to play through, and five newly introduced locations. Those environments will take up to 3TB of data alone, to provide the photographic detail that will be ten times that was featured in previous Forza games. Turn 10 has also cited impressive new features, such as real time raytracing, allowing Forza to punch even above the weight of what it’s supposed to accomplish on Xbox Series’ specifications, and dynamic time of day. The dynamic time of day system will procedurally generate volumetric fog and clouds, and will see racers rolling the dice that their day track might be transitioning into a night track, or that they will suddenly be interrupted by rain.

For racing game fans, this sounds like Turn 10 taking a serious crack at Polyphony Digital’s approach to graphics with Gran Turismo. It’s an interesting time to do so as Gran Turismo 7 hasn’t struck a chord with the fans as they historically did. Whether Forza Motorsport goes on to be more popular and successful than Gran Turismo 7 is one thing. What would be more interesting is if Forza Motorsport finally matches Gran Turismo’s graphics, solidifying how far consoles have gone in general that they don’t have to be handcrafted anymore.

Source: Jeff Grubb’s Game Mess