In a community created of like-minded players such as Forza, companies would be wise to listen to those within the community that are not happy. Case in point, Turn 10 is no longer supporting the unicorns for a game that is four years old, which makes since. However, their are thousands within the FM4 community who are upset at the decision to no longer support their unicorns saying four years is long enough to get them and if you didn’t get them then its the consumers fault. May I suggest a different plan of attack that doesn’t cut off a huge portion of the community that Microsoft and Turn 10 have spend more than a decade building.
I have a brain injury caused from an automobile accident 4 years ago, causing impaired playing skills and slowing the game down to an painful level. In the roll over I hit my head several times causing a condition known as Post-Concussion Syndrome. With more falls that came over the next very months, I spent Christmas in the hospital and was diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury, or TBI. I have worked very hard to get my vocabulary back, since I am a preacher, but I am hindered physically so I cannot move as much as I did before the accident. POINT OF ALL THIS: Forza Motorsports 4 has helped with my fear of cars, crashing, drifting on ice (which caused the original accident). I cannot play as fast as other players, my online persona is hard to get across thru blogging, and I certainly cannot draw as well as some of the beautiful cars I’ve seen in the past year of unicorn give away contests. So I came up with a plan that I think is a win-win for the entire Forza Community, including Microsoft and Turn 10.
Instead of no longer stopping the support of the unicorns, sell them as DLC through Microsoft points. EXAMPLE: A person needs 6 unicorns to finish their collection, so this person goes to Walmart or buys points online for $60 dollars. Then he goes to the Forza Store to redeem his $60 dollars in points and then buys $60 dollars worth of unicorns for FM4. The player still gets their unicorn, Microsoft sells the DLC Unicorn for $10 dollars worth of points, which the player needs to buy from a point source (Walmart or XBOX 360) which gives Microsoft another $10, so in total Turn 10 gets $20 dollars for a $10 car. To speed the process, since supporting unicorns is a sore spot it seems, make the promotion last for an extremely short time. Announce it know, or as soon as you can, and end the promotion at the end of May or June. You can sell the cars in packs or as individuals and this way Turn 10 has made it possible to get the cars that players like my self of tried to get through writing on blogs, sending pictures of cars that will never be seen because of all the great artists in OUR community, and it short so Turn 10 can get the unicorn monkey off its back in a special, supportive, and creative way. Instead of just cutting us loose and saying oh well, which sends a nonchalant message to millions of buyers and billions of dollars.
If it wasn’t for Microsoft and Turn 10, the healing process from my TBI would not have been as fast as other sources of therapy. I have learned to deal with car flips, uncontrolled spinouts, eye/hand coordination, and reading. I know have magazine subscriptions of car mags to understand everything from understeer to dampeners and why torque is more important than just lots of horsepower. I even have a Forza Tuning Calculator downloaded so when I tune, I tune correctly. PLEASE consider my proposal as a possible solution to the thousands of unicorn lovers looking for them before they are gone forever.