Forza Horizon developers first wanted to reboot Project Gotham Racing

The founders of Forza Horizon developer Playground Games first wanted to reboot Project Gotham Racing. When they pitched that at Turn 10, the Forza Motorsports developer fired it. On the spot, Playground Games came up with Forza Horizon, a game that they were allowed to make.

Trevor Williams, one of the founders of Playground Games, pitched the reboot of the Project Gotham Racing series in a Los Angeles restaurant. Four PGR games for Xbox consoles were released from 2001 to 2007, these arcade racing games were created by Bizarre Creations. When Bizarre was acquired by Activision in 2007, there were no more Project Gotham Racing games. The rights remained with Microsoft, allowing this company to continue making the game.

When Williams pitched the making of new PGR games to Turn 10 Studios, the developer didn’t see the point. That’s what Williams and Turn 10 Studios executives Dan Greenawalt and Alan Hartman say in an interview with GQ† Why the Turn 10 didn’t feel like a Project Gotham Racing reboot is not clear from the article.

Williams does say that he was immediately concerned and did not know what to do. Moments later, Hartman asked Williams what his studio could do with the Forza series. “Then we pitched what would become Horizon, practically on a napkin,” Williams says.

2012 saw the release of the first of the Horizon games, open world racing games that are more arcade than Forza Motorsports track racing. The Forza Horizon games have since become one of Microsoft’s biggest game series. The fifth game in the series was released last November, a game that according to Microsoft had the best ‘first week’ of an Xbox game at the time.

The interview continues on the development of the new Forza Motorsports game, which is due out next year. In the article, Greenawalt and Hartman outline how they are developing the game and hope it can become a racing platform within Game Pass.