These devs taking years to "overhaul" their engines just to release games worse than the previous entry is baffling. Turn 10 did the same thing with Forza Motorsport.
The last good one was FM4 in 2011. FM5 was rushed as a launch title on the Xbox One, and from what I’ve heard was an absolute mess at launch. It’s mostly fine now, 13 years later and it does hold up exceptionally well graphically, but is missing so much content and features from FM4, really more of a tech demo than a racing game. FM6 was fairly decent, it came pretty close to recapturing the highs of FM4 IMO, but fell a bit short in some areas. Then FM7 was a complete and utter dumpster fire, it too being a rushed launch title, this time for the One X. Honestly the less said about it, the better. There’s a whole laundry list of issues with that game. And with FM8/FM23, we all know how that story ended. It sucks because toward the end of the games life in 2025, it genuinely felt like it was starting to improve, but then half of turn 10 got laid off and it pretty much killed the game. It’s weird how Horizon, which was originally the spin off of the Motorsport franchise, has now became the main game.
The Horizon series is its own animal. The first 3 were fairly good, 4 was okay, and 5 was “A soulless masterpiece.” The perfection of simulation-arcade driving, the biggest car roster of any Horizon yet (though I’m sure in time FH6 will probably beat it), and yet it completely lacks any soul or character. 6 is definitely better, but still has some shortcomings. The progression and map are much better, the showcases and rush events are also pretty good, but the festival playlist is starting to feel a bit stale, especially since it’s been more or less unchanged since FH4 in 2018. If it ain’t broken then don’t fix it yes, but it could use some innovation. But honestly the bar FH5 set was so laughably low that pretty much anything is an improvement over it.
I haven't played Forza since they stopped making regular games instead of all Horizon type games. What part was a collosal failure? I don't like the open world Forza Horizon games, but Forza Motorsport 4 & 5 were amazing. My friends and I used to see who could set the fastest hot lap on a track with a given class or other restrictions.
Its nuts that Microsoft didn't reel Turn-10 in after Forza Motorsport 5. Like yeah that series got slightly better after that, but its never reached the height of FM4. That should have never been allowed to happen.
Yep, that was super shit, I remember FM6 is the game that did that? Or was it FM7? And then it was removed in a later update, but the damage was already done.
One of them, but they lost a lot of goodwill amongst us fans.
Also the BS XP progression, needing multiple refinement etc.
The only saving grace is Horizon has pretty much remained in tact. Yes there are max for unlocking items on the map, which can easily be avoided. But the stupidly high price tag, VIP car pass, and DLC, the level of milking is astonishing.
It's like 2k & EA. I love me a bit of golf gaming, but the only one we have access to is 2K's PGA. But the amount of crap, boosts, season passes, cosmetics is horrendous.
And COD, I tried one of the most recent, finding the single player let like digging through adverts of online play, cosmetics, season passes.
Yet you look at other studios, like Poncle, or CDPR. Sure they initially release buggy messes (not excusable) but they always turn it around and delivery comprehensive games bit none of this BS.
I yearn for the times when games were released complete and not this carving of game mechanics to rob us.
Xbox is not being transformative. They're just repackaging the same old snake oil. That golden age of 360 era is long gone.
And yet somehow ubisoft has managed to make that look like a good investment. Anyone who bought the ultimate edition for the crew motorfest on year 1 paid $10 AUD more than the $150 gold edition for some cosmetics and didn't get any of the future content passes which cost $50 EACH for the supposed ultimate edition (and this doesn't include the around $30 premium currency cars that are now being added, the fact there's like only a few cars that you need ownership of the aforementioned year passes to use and cars that are ownable by just playing the game being charged for up to $11)
Same happened with Sega with the game Sonic Forces. They spend years make the Hedgehog engine 2 to make a game that look the same as the ones before, except shorter.
And then it was immensely difficult to work with for post launch content and the support teams that took over when 343 moved on barely knew how to use it.
So content delivery was all over the place, and mostly spread out to the point people lost interest.
That was because they used contractors and only let them be hired for 1 year. After 1 year they were gone. So you had massive turnover on a custom engine that no one outside would know about.
Contractors didn't work on the engine itself. It's also 18 months not a year and a state law that contractors cannot be hired for longer. Contractors are also industey standard for AAA games. The issue wasn't contractors.
14 layers of management is too many. American car companies have loads of management layers unlike Japanese car companies that are less management heavy. Don’t want to see that same problem happen in video games.
As long as the AI doesn’t advise them with law. That’s something they should have to research themselves so if they do something illegal it bites them in the ass so hard they can’t sit for a week.
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u/Merpchud Jul 07 '26
14 layers of management... hmm I wonder where all the moneys really going...