Watch: Next ‘Forza Motorsport’ will be ‘most technically advanced’ ever

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Fans of the Forza Motorsports gaming franchise will know it’s been a hot minute since Turn 10 Studios has released a new iteration of the racing sim on Xbox. With nearly half-a-decade passing since its last instalment, Microsoft’s competitor to the Gran Turismo series is long due for an update. Now, with this announcement, we know a new Forza Motorsport game is on its way for the 2023 calendar year.

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Watch: Next ‘Forza Motorsport’ will be ‘most technically advanced’ ever Back to video

It would seem the developers are well aware of this lag. The official teaser video kicks off to strains of Jay-Z’s “Public Service Announcement” track from The Black Album, in which he raps “allow me to reintroduce myself.” Point taken. A typically cinematic montage of race cars and their liveries are splashed across the screen, showing incredible detail of both the vehicles turning their wheels in anger; and the environs in which they are placed.

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This game marks the eighth entry into the Forza Motorsport franchise, a series of titles which stand apart from the tangentially-related Forza Horizon spin-off (of which there are five iterations). FM is generally seen as a more true-to-life racing sim, putting cars of all stripes on the world’s racetracks, whereas FH is an open-world sandbox with a dash of in-game player backstory. Both are equally entertaining in their own ways.

The gameplay demo shown below profiles dynamic time-of-day environment changes, plus tire and fuel management, something gamers have been clamoring for in previous instalments of the franchise.

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Developers also highlighted the return of some classic tracks, like the fictional Maple Valley, while taking pains to call the game “all-new” and how it’s “built from the ground up.” The term “most technically advanced racing game ever made” was also thrown around with wild abandon. Sounds good to us.

Your author has been a fan of the Forza franchise since its inception, trading away a PlayStation 3 all those years ago for a shiny new Xbox after being immersed in the Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo series of games for years. It’s my belief the Forza franchise currently does a much better job of presenting the cars and producing an entertaining game, standing in stark contrast to the takes-itself-too-seriously GT.

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If the two games were real-life cars, Gran Turismo would be a grey Golf R (extremely capable but far too dour) and Forza would be Civic Type R (equally talented but with a dash of fun that anoraks pretend not to like but secretly enjoy).

Look for the new Forza Motorsport – no number this time – on retailer shelves and digital download in the second quarter of 2023.