Playground Games’ Forza Horizon — now a leading racing franchise — began after a pitch to reboot Project Gotham Racing was dismissed, according to developer Trevor Williams.
Pitch rejected, new idea born
Williams told GQ that he went into a meeting in Los Angeles with Forza veterans Alan Hartman and Dan Greenawalt aiming to persuade them to reboot Project Gotham Racing. Hartman and Greenawalt were not interested in a PGR revival and rejected the idea outright.
Despite that dismissal, the Forza creators still wanted to hear what Playground Games had in mind. Within minutes the conversation shifted: Hartman asked where Playground would take Forza, and the team sketched out what would become Horizon “almost on a napkin,” Williams said.
From napkin sketch to franchise
The first Forza Horizon released in 2011, four years after the last Project Gotham Racing installment. Project Gotham Racing produced four titles for Xbox and Xbox 360 between 2001 and 2007, developed by Bizarre Creations.
Bizarre Creations was later acquired by Activision, and the Project Gotham Racing series has not been revisited since it was discontinued in 2010. IGN says Microsoft still holds the PGR rights, but there have been no known projects to revive the series as attention shifted to Forza Horizon.
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Horizon surpasses its origins
Forza Horizon evolved into a more popular offshoot than its Motorsport origins. The latest entry in the Horizon series, Forza Horizon 5, was released in 2021.
Meanwhile, Forza Motorsport — the series from which Horizon spun off — was announced at Summer Game Fest to receive a new entry, the first since 2017, with a planned 2023 release.
