The short version
- Turn 10 Studios, the Microsoft team behind Forza Motorsport, has merged into Playground Games, the UK studio behind Forza Horizon. It's now called Playground Games Redmond.
- Dan Greenawalt, who founded Turn 10 and led Forza from the start, is retiring from Microsoft after 27 years. The news came in an internal memo from Playground studio head Trevor Williams, first reported by The Verge on October 30, 2026.
- The Redmond team will help make Forza Horizon and Fable. Forza Motorsport (2023) stopped getting new content in December 2025, and no new Motorsport game has been announced.
- Forza Horizon 6 still arrives on PS5 on January 26, 2027, with PS5 pre-orders in India from ₹5,499.
What happened
On October 30, The Verge's Tom Warren reported an internal Microsoft memo from Trevor Williams, head of Playground Games. According to the memo, as quoted by Pure Xbox, Greenawalt "decided that this is the right time for him to retire from Microsoft". Williams thanked him for "founding Turn 10 Studios" and leading it through years of E3 stage appearances.
At the same time, Turn 10 stops existing as a separate studio. Its staff in Redmond, Washington, now sit inside Playground Games under the name Playground Games Redmond. Pure Xbox reports the team is now helping develop Forza Horizon and Fable, Playground's long-awaited fantasy RPG.
Microsoft hasn't posted about the change on Xbox Wire, and the memo as reported doesn't name a separate leader for the Redmond team. Playground itself sits under Xbox Game Studios, which is part of the Xbox business now run by CEO Asha Sharma.
Image: Xbox Game Studios
Who is Dan Greenawalt?
Greenawalt is one of the longest-serving people in Xbox's history. Before Forza, he worked on Project Gotham Racing, an original Xbox launch-era racer. He then founded Turn 10 and led the creation of Forza Motorsport, which launched in 2005 as Microsoft's answer to Sony's Gran Turismo.
Under him, Turn 10 shipped eight Forza Motorsport games. More importantly for today's players, Turn 10 built ForzaTech, the in-house engine that also powers Playground's Forza Horizon games and Fable. So even people who've never touched a track racer have been playing on Turn 10's technology for years.
How Turn 10 got here
Image: Zerocade
This merger didn't come out of nowhere. The last two years were rough for the studio:
- October 10, 2023: Forza Motorsport, a ground-up reboot, launched on Xbox Series X|S and PC. Critics liked it (around 84 on Metacritic, and it won Best Sports/Racing Game at The Game Awards) but Steam user reviews were mostly negative.
- July 2, 2025: during Microsoft's wider layoffs, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported that Turn 10 lost nearly 50% of its staff, citing a source. Microsoft didn't confirm the figure.
- October 2025: then Xbox boss Phil Spencer said Motorsport wasn't dead, but that Microsoft sometimes needs "to shift focus to games that need to ship sooner".
- December 2025: Turn 10 announced it was ending new content for Forza Motorsport. Servers stayed online, and the team said its focus was moving to Forza Horizon 6.
After that, Turn 10 was effectively a support team for Playground and for ForzaTech. Today's merger makes that official on paper.
What this means for Forza Horizon 6 and PS5
For Horizon fans, probably not much changes in the short term. Forza Horizon 6 launched on Xbox and PC in May 2026, set in Japan. The PS5 version, built by Panic Button with Playground and Turn 10, releases on January 26, 2027, with Premium Edition early access from January 21. The first Premium Expansion also lands on all platforms on January 21.
PS5 pre-orders in India started at ₹5,499 for the Standard Edition when they opened in October. Cross-play and cross-save with Xbox and Steam are supported. Keeping the Redmond engine team close to Playground should, on paper, help with post-launch updates on all three platforms.
Image: Xbox Game Studios
Is Forza Motorsport finished?
Nobody at Microsoft has said the series is cancelled. But the studio that made it no longer exists under that name, its founder is leaving, and the 2023 game has had no new content for almost a year. Pure Xbox's own read is that the 2023 reboot is looking like the last game in the series.
If you play sim racers on Xbox or PC, Forza Motorsport (2023) still works, since its servers stayed online. If you want a newer track racer, Gran Turismo 7 on PS5 remains the main console option.
What to watch for
Look for any official Xbox Wire post naming who runs Playground Games Redmond, and for Fable news, since that's where the extra Redmond staff are reportedly going. The next firm Forza date is January 21, 2027, when early access for Forza Horizon 6 on PS5 begins.
