Microsoft is officially uniting its two premier Forza development studios into a single, cohesive entity, marking a monumental shift in the operational structure of Xbox. As part of a broader, sweeping corporate reorganization, Playground Games—the celebrated developer behind the massively popular Forza Horizon open-world arcade racer series—and Turn 10 Studios, the veteran creators of the track-focused simulation franchise Forza Motorsport, are being merged. Moving forward, the combined workforce will concentrate their joint efforts on the continuation of the Forza Horizon franchise and the highly anticipated RPG Fable.
The structural shake-up was detailed in an internal memo authored by Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty, shedding light on how Microsoft intends to streamline its racing game development pipelines. According to Booty, the two studios are far from strangers, having cultivated a deep collaborative relationship spanning well over a decade.
"Playground and Turn 10 will come together as one studio focused on the Forza and Fable franchises," explains Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty in his memo outlining the strategic pivot. "These two studios have been technological, creative, and franchise partners for over a decade, and today’s changes will formally move their work into one team."
While the consolidation aims to leverage the collective talent and technological resources of both teams under one unified banner, the effective closure of Turn 10 Studios as a standalone entity raises major, unanswered questions regarding the long-term future of the Forza Motorsport franchise. For years, Turn 10 served as the technological backbone of Microsoft’s racing ecosystem, building the proprietary ForzaTech engine that powered both simulation tracks and open-world horizons. With the studio now absorbed into Playground Games, the future of whether Microsoft will ever return to dedicated, track-based simulation racing or pivot its entire racing strategy exclusively toward the commercially lucrative Forza Horizon formula remains uncertain.
This consolidation does not happen in a vacuum; it follows a turbulent period of contraction and downsizing for Turn 10 Studios. More than 70 people at the Forza Motorsport developer were laid off last year, in a severe structural contraction that impacted the vast majority of the studio’s headcount. Over the past year, Turn 10 Studios has essentially transitioned into a maintenance crew, tasked primarily with supporting and keeping the lights on for Forza Motorsport post-launch. Under the terms of today’s reorganization, the remaining personnel at Turn 10 will officially transition over to Playground Games, where they will pivot to working collaboratively on Forza Horizon and the studio’s ongoing development of Fable.
The merging of Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios forms just one major piece of a much larger, comprehensive reorganization of Xbox operations. In a series of sweeping operational shifts that are redefining how Microsoft manages its first-party game portfolio, stewardship of the iconic Halo franchise is being transitioned to Activision. Alongside this surprising shift, other structural realignments are taking place across Microsoft’s gaming division, affecting notable studios such as Sea of Thieves developer Rare and World’s Edge, the internal team responsible for managing and developing the Age of Empires real-time strategy franchise. These sweeping changes represent one of the most significant overhauls of Xbox’s internal studio ecosystem in recent memory, altering reporting lines, resource allocations, and long-term franchise management strategies across the board.
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