While negotiating with manufacturers is of course a major factor in determining which cars we can put into our games, this particular theory isn’t a scenario we encounter. Ultimately, any car that appears in Forza is a car we at Turn 10 decided to include.
For cars that appeared in a previous Forza title but do not in the current game, there are many reasons. I’ll summarize a few here:
Sometimes it’s a choice we made to make room for another car we felt was more important for the title. Game design balance might be a factor. Or disc space: there’s only so much room on the physical disc. Project budget or schedule impact another: porting and licensing cars from earlier titles in addition to building and licensing new cars all come with resource cost we have to prioritize.
Sometimes we decide that a car has been made redundant by a higher trim version or newer model that otherwise is too similar to an older model to justify both.
Sometimes we are unable to license a particular car by a manufacturer, or any car by a manufacturer (or even multiple OEMs represented by the same agency) for one reason or another, even if it was in last year’s game. There are quite a few cars in the community top 100 list that fall under this category, but we’ll keep trying.
There’s a reason that no other racing game features so many manufacturers: it’s really hard! It takes a dedicated team of professional licensing and legal experts working year-round to maintain strong relationships with OEMs, race teams, and the agencies and lawyers who represent them, as well negotiating ever-changing contract terms, costs, and often changing personal contacts.
The desire to have every car that has appeared in Forza to be included in every new Forza is understandable, but to expect that is just not realistic from a game design, licensing, or business perspective.
We know many of you would like to see the return of some great cars from earlier Forza titles, and thanks to ManteoMax’s awesome list we have a pretty good idea which ones, new and old, are the most important to the community for consideration in DLC or future titles. In the past 2 months, we’ve delivered 15 cars from the top 100 production and top 100 race cars list. We’ll keep at it, too.