Well, that pretty much settles it. Sounds like there wasn’t much Forza could do about this. It’s looking like a Volkswagen/FH3 situation again. I wouldn’t expect to see them for a while, sadly. Which sucks, as a big Alfa/Lancia fan.
Having looked at that video, I remain…unconvinced. For one thing, his video is like a lot of others that purport to explain or reveal great mysteries - heavy on filler, light on meat. Probably the biggest takeaway from it was that Audi’s also dipped from Need for Speed. Even the segment regarding Forza and Stellantis ends with a acknowledgement that there’s a significantly non-zero chance that Microsoft/Turn 10/Playground Games have the needed rights after all, and if the cars suddenly start showing up in the Playlist, there’s going to be a problem.
But, even if we allow the possible conceit that this was a matter of timing, that Turn 10/PGG were simply too late to get this done…it still doesn’t reflect well on them. You know, licensing may be very, very different from developing and all that jazz, but if you’re having these kinds of problems, then maybe don’t give so much money to the people responsible for making sure the stupid gas tank piñatas have ray-tracing enabled and slide that back to the folks responsible for making sure your content platter doesn’t qualify for AARP benefits right out of the gate.
I guess I’m still in Camp “Chickens Coming Home To Roost for Turn 10/PGG”. I think there’s a lot of things they’ve done that are slowly blowing back on them, because the manufacturers are seeing that other developers won’t compromise in certain areas or they will, but in such a fashion that doesn’t make them look bad or that an extra cash injection can’t gloss over. Meanwhile, Forza’s all “Well, we’ve always done it this way. Who are you to make us change?” and slowly but surely, they’re getting an increasing amount of “OK, you have fun with your NIOs and Wulings then. We’ll go somewhere that doesn’t treat us like we’re toddlers.”
Believe me, I’m certainly not letting Microsoft/Turn 10/Playground off the hook completely for this one, nor I am letting them off the hook for every other puzzling decision they’ve made for Horizon 5 and any other games preceding it.
If anything, if they were too late to the get the licensing rights before the merger went into full swing, we can now approximate how each developer or publisher prioritizes licensing during the development cycle. Criteon, Codemasters, and Polphony clearly get licenses earlier in development since they all acquired the FCA brands before the Stellantis merger, but all the games were released well after the merger had begun.
The big three companies under the Forza umbrella, however, seem to get licenses at the eleven hour, which would explain why official car list announcements were such a mess before launch. It took them several months to reveal that BMW and Mazda were in the game, the Lancia Stratos snunk into a livestream where it was completely front and center, and many Fords that ended up being in the base game at launch, like the Ford Lotus Cortina, were initially ommitted from official announcements.
I’m no accountant, so I can’t say which of these two strategies, if actually the case, makes more sense budget-wise, but if I were making a video game known for having licensed cars, I know I’d at least want the car list more or less set in stone well before launch on the off-chance of such a merger.
I find it all hilarious considering licensing is also timed. They have to be renewed.
Did you forget?
And that frankly speaks to Forza’s priorities being rather skewed in the wrong direction - something I’m sure I’ve discussed at length in the past, particularly when it comes to car content. Turns out that Alfa Romeo and Lancia are also on that list of cars that sit in a higher-priority tier than a Morris Traveler. Who knew?
Well, they are British so…
Actually yesterday was completely formalized that FCA Italy has now become Stellantis Europe, with the HQ still in Turin with Fiat/Abarth. So now probably licensing deals could be re-opened
Hope they come back
Do you have a source for that?
It’s likely not true. Anything about Stellantis Europe in the Google news tab right now is about their upcoming EV charging service.
Which is a ridiculous deal that needs to be renegotiated.
GTA only cuts songs they lose the licenses to when they re-release the game.
They dont cut the entire game out of existence like apparently car licenses require.
That along with the increasing rigidity around destruction on models, Which I thought would eventually get better, not worse.
This is resulting in the games side of the deal getting continually screwed out of good content and the manufacturers literally getting paid for advertising their cars directly to the kind people who might actually buy them.
It just doesnt make any sense as a business deal.
Can’t find anything in English, that’s why the other user couldn’t find anything but EV charging plan, but this article (and others) from an italian newspaper translates it as “goodbye to FCA Italy, from July 1st, Stellantis Europe for the main activities
Ivory Tower added two Stratos today in the Crew 2.
I really hope T10/PG will sort it out for upcoming releases. But from what I’ve seen the new Motorsport is affected as well; or has there been sights of an Alfa, Lancia, Fiat?
Lancia Delta was spotted in 2020 reveal trailer for Forza Motorsport - a long time ago, so today it means nothing.
As for Lancia Stratos in The Crew 2, there is an interesting tweet about it:
“Not eligible yet through the Collection Import to #TheCrewMotorfest” - it looks like Ivory Tower is able to add new Lancias to the older game but the brand is absent from the upcoming installment, alongside Alfa Romeo and Fiat/Abarth (leaks from the beta suggest it as well).
I wonder why Gran Turismo 7 doesn’t have similar problems.
Kinda. The words “not eligible for transfer” technically refer to what Ivory Tower stated about this feature in the The Crew SummerFest video on Youtube, where they said that all vehicles up until this update will be transferred to the new game without problems, whereas the ability to transfer cars added from now on will be implemented later in TC Motorfest’s life
I’m playing TC2 right now and the game shows me which cars exactly are eligible for import to TC Motorfest. All Alfa Romeo, Abarth and Lancia models that I’ve collected long time ago are missing 
Ok, sorry, that’s a different thing then!
Ivory Tower stated that all vehicles would be transferred up to now, so for the Stratos they made that clarification.
But interesting then