Players hoping to hop into Forza Motorsport with a friend by their side on launch day will have to rethink their plans. Developer Turn 10 has announced that its upcoming racing title won’t support split-screen play at launch when it comes to PC and Xbox Series X|S on October 10.
Forza Motorsport’s visuals have taken precedent
As first reported by Eurogamer, the latest Forza Monthly livestream brought with it potentially disappointing news for fans of the popular racing franchise. During the roughly 90-minute stream, Forza Horizon creative director Chris Esaki announced that split-screen play will not be included in the game at launch. Esaki attributed the feature’s omission to Turn 10’s “heavy investment in pushing [the] new graphical features” in the upcoming Gran Turismo competitor. This increased focus on graphical fidelity led to difficulties in implementing local multiplayer support, ultimately resulting in Turn 10’s decision not to include it at launch.
Although split-screen support appears to be coming to Forza Motorsport at some point after launch, other legacy features have been cut from the game entirely. Esaki stated during the presentation that the game will also lack a spectator mode for Featured Multiplayer races, as well as the ability to add AI racers to the mix. Both features were cut because Turn 10 felt that the addition of spectators and AI racers was “not really the racing that [it] had intended.” While typically not an option in the more arcade-influenced Forza Horizon series, spectator mode was a popular feature among some Forza Motorsport 7 players.
First announced during 2020’s Xbox Showcase, Forza Motorsport was initially set to release in spring of this year before being shifted to a late 2023 launch. The graphically stunning racer was one of the highlights of January’s Xbox Developer Direct presentation, with Turn 10 using that showcase to highlight improvements to the game’s audiovisual elements and physics.