This is probably a test case in a way. Forza is no longer going to be an xbox exclusive from here on out. They already said Horizon 3 will be on PC and the next Forza will be developed for PC from the ground up along with the Xbox version. I say it’s about time. Forza could be the best looking game out there without the xbox holding it back. It will finally have a chance really shine the way it should. Forza fans should be jumping for joy. Personally I’d take driving 50 cars on 6 tracks on the PC over the full game on the console any day just for the graphical and performance increase I’ll get.
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Think of this… Having VR support… on a game nobody can complain about paying money for… It is an AAA game, with YEARS of development.
Not many games are set up to be a free game, paid for by the publisher.
If Forza becomes the Namesake racing game for VR, it can simply be written off as a Publicity campaign done right.
If it sells headsets, at $600 a pop, and can be bundled into the box, They can make money from it that way.
Eventually, Pc gamers will turn to Forza 7 as their racing game of choice, if the VR works with it well.
I for one am excited for all the possibilities that this brings to the studio. doors that can be unlocked.
There are a LOT of talented modders out there, given the right tools, we could see more accurate car modelling, even downgrades for cars… (Chrysler 300 base model V6 as an option from the SRT8)
Have you played any of the pc racing games/sims? This will not happen unless forza creates a way for people to do what they buy a RACING game for, to be able to RACE against people of similar skill. Sure forza may look better than some of the existing racing games/sims available on pc currently but they are going to have to make leaps and bounds to truly be a threat to the other racing games/sims out there.
Dirt rally - not a competitor, forza doesnt have dirt.
Asetto Corsa - not really a competitor, people regard asetto as having some of the best physics out there and graphically looks as good as forza and people actually enjoy the ffb, however much less content. (VR already works?)
Pcars - 100x better ffb. custom user created lobbies, and graphically looks as good or better than forza, less content but the content feels more relevant to racing in my oppinion. I dont care if forza has every car in the microcompact car class irl. (VR already works)
Iracing - graphically not as good as forza but it does 1 thing 1000x better than forza… RACING. Real life driver swaps, actual team endurance racing, a safety system to keep wreckers away, a ranking system for drivers to match make, user created leagues/lobbies, classes of cars set up to promote close racing and even regarded by professional drivers as the most realistic tracks, good ffb. (VR already works)
Automobilista - newer, havent played it but regarded as having some of the best physics already.
Game stock car extreme - the predecessor to automobilista, supposed to have some of the best physics out there.
RaceroomRacing Experience (R3E) - Much better ffb, pretty good physics, free to play (additional content cost more), quite possibly the best sounds of any racing game.
Rfactor 1&2 - havent played so dont know much about either.
^ do you now see why forza needs to do something giant rather than just throwing more cars (that the majority of people dont even care about) at a game. Or forza could continue to strip things out of the game and just release forzavista (PC) and all it will do is showcase cars, no driving at all! Remember the reason forza is on top of the console world currently is because they have no competition! Pcars recently came out but it was so buggy on release (xbox especially) that people gave up on it, but I know quite a few people that wont even play it on xbox but thoroughly enjoy it on pc. Then theres gran turismo 6 the other console heavy hitter… which hasnt released a game on the next gen system… remember this is the second release title on next gen for forza…
I just dont see this as a good move, they should focus on the niche that they have been doing so well in or let it die and go all out with the money they’ve made on consoles and try to compete with the above, but to me they wont be able to do both.
The gaming industry is strange in a way. Not long ago we were hearing all these stories that the PC market was dying and that the next wave was “mobile.” That sure died on the vine… Now it seems Microsoft are putting all their eggs into the Win10 basket. Anyways, I will be playing this on PC at 1080p as for me I don’t feel I need 4K or 8K. The series will always have a place on consoles as well though and it would be sad to see Microsoft move away from a decent console that has just started its run.
-k
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Mobile is still a very big deal, especially for consoles. The reason, or at least partly, that Microsoft is reaching back into games on PC is because of mobile gaming. Mobile gaming is eating the console market from the bottom up. There are vast amounts of money being made in mobile right now, but MS has tried, and tried, and failed repeatedly in that market. I’m sure that they will try again, but in the meantime, they have nowhere to go for their software (games) than PC.
So, what you have now is a gaming market dominated by PCs at the top in terms of enthusiast gaming. The PC is the “premium” gaming platform, and that’s where players that consider themselves “serious” gamers are. On the bottom, you have the mobile market which caters to the vast, vast amount of casual gamers who don’t consider themselves “serious”, but because of the vast numbers, there is more money here than anywhere. In the weird, awkward middle, you have the leftover consoles. This market is being steadily squeezed both from the top and the bottom, and will probably dwindle away in the near future. Consoles main selling points are their ease of use and inexpensive access to gaming. Mobile has completely dominated these selling points, leaving consoles with very little to distinguish themselves as gaming tools. Mobile is the cheap, easy gaming platform of the future (present), and PC is the gaming platform for enthusiasts (as it always has been).
Microsoft owns minecraft. I would say they are doing fine in the mobile market. The bigger problem is they are pushing their money maker windows, whether its through console, pc, mobile etc. The other issue ms is having is they are focused on an all in one console and not an outright gaming console. The other problem with gaming consoles is that they arent powerful enough anymore to keep up with what the developers are able to do and gaming consoles are supposed to be built for gaming. Below is a low end Gaming rig so you can see the hardware along with some pros and cons of the pc vs xbox.
CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra GUA520
ram: 8gb ddr3
CPU: AMD fx4300 3.8ghz
gpu: Nvidia GT730 900mhz
HDD: 1TB (7200) rpm
Usb ports: 8
Kinect/Camera: No
DVD/CD - Yes
Peripheals supported: All
Can be used for business, entertainment, gaming (albiet probably not well but hey xbox1 has similar specs)
Upgradeable, could easily and fairly cheaply make this a much much more powerful device than xbox1
Developers have complete freedom of their own product.
$509.00
After looking at the specs would you honestly buy that pc if you were thinking of buying a piece of hardware to get into pc gaming? Not likely. Then why do we spend the same money on an even less powerful piece of hardware in the xbox 1? Below is the specs of the xbox 1 hardware.
ram: 8gb DDR3
cpu: 8 come amd 1.75 ghz
gpu: 800-853mhz
HDD: 500GB (5400 rpm)
USB ports: 3
Kinect: X
Blueray: X
Perripheals supported: fanatec products, thrustmaster products, logitech wheels/pedals, some headsets, Supposedly you can use keyboard and mouse.
Used solely for entertainment using xbox live store
pro: Easy to use, games already “optomized” for the system
Con: constantly dealing with ms reliability and having any updates streamlined through them
$500.00
As many features as people want in games, and how they want to abuse the developers for not putting them into game, ms is partly to blame for that as well by giving them such weak hardware as the hardware they are required to work with. With that said I am in no way saying that removing features from a game that were available in an even more inferior hardware is acceptable. But wouldn’t we all love for forza to have dynamic tracks, dynamic time of day, dynamic weather, which basically everyone has stayed away from with a 30 foot pole unless they are locked to 30 fps, or their name is sms.
All I will say about this, is that Microsoft are very smart coming back to its first gaming machine, the Windows PC. They made games for Windows since the 80’s up until the Xbox came out in 2001. Flight Simulator was born in the 1980’s. Anyways, granted they might not have Sony’s numbers now, please guys do try to remember that even though they aren’t #1 in sales vs the PS4, they are ABSOLUTELY making better numbers this time this far into the life of the Xbone than they were selling the same length of time into the Xbox 360’s life, so yes, they are absolutely pretty well off profit wise. Although some might see them moving back over to PC gaming and the closure of Lionhead Studios as a sign they are hurting, I can assure you they are not. They are just trying to slim down on total money lost on every expensive project.
They know that if they can recoup some of the development costs on all of these huge high budget AAA first party game projects by releasing them on the most popular gaming platform right now, which happens to be the PC it will only help to make the Xbox brand stronger in the long run. This means that they can take bigger risks to try and fund more innovative games.
I hope that the Forza series sells VERY well on Windows 10, I know us PC gamers have been clamoring for the Forza series on PC for years now.
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^^^ pretty much. Automobilista is as good as iracing without the ongoing sub from what people have been saying (I havent played automobilista).
Iracing also got updated to DX11 just recently and a number of improvements still coming, including weather.
The biggest issue with forza is the upgrades. its nigh on impossible to balance. Secondary to that is making everything available to everything has made every car generic and the same.
The easiest way to tweak for PC would be to go back to FM2 style upgrades and CPL’s, otherwise we are stuck with the usual handful of fast cars, and everything else is trash.
It is a never ending challenge to tweak the upgrade system in forza, but this is exactly what sets it apart from all those other good racing games. In forza, only a few cars have the potential to be the absolute fastest, but almost any car can be modified to be at least somewhat useful on the track. plus this system makes for a huge variety in potential drift cars.
maybe it’s okay that the game will be singleplayer only first, so we have a chance to get our builds down before we’re thrown in the arena. I hope they don’t wait too long with implementing multiplayer .
Get what builds down?
They are already down. Its the same generic process as 6/5 already is.
- to support DX12 exclusively implemented on heavy advertised Windows 10
- to promote poorly developed Windows Store, only place where Apex can be found
Theres no any other single reason. Hope it’s clear.
World of Tanks is a great free to play, in my opinion. I also like options play on different platforms.
All future Forza titles to be released across both platforms? I’m assuming both platforms will be playing on the same servers, that makes sense, right?
I like that Forza is an Xbox specific title. Having played PCars briefly, it has put me off the whole bridging of console snd PC titles.
Don’t get me wrong, if done properly, it could end well. However, if I wanted to play with PC gamers, I would have a PC setup.
Maybe it"s time to convert to another racing game.
It’s hard to guess what will eventually happen, but i’m guessing PC and X1 multiplayer will be separate, or atleast you may be given a choice of which servers you play on?
You’ll be missed Brave, but you’ll also be missing out 
Back to my point from earlier… convert to what? There are no other racers on console (GT? Driveclub? NFS?), its why forza has been able to basically you get what you get and you dont get upset attitude and actually get away with it. PC is the way to go if you are a true sim/virtual racing fan. IMO forza doesnt stand a chance with their current model and theories if they go to pc there are too many other worthy opponents.
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The way I tried to explain it to my cousin that the true gaming enthusiasts play on PC and know their systems inside in out. Think of it as a person who drives a used ford Focus, versus somebody that owns a fully modded Subaru WRX STI with 700hp., Obviously it will perform better than any stock machine.
Look, I don’t want to start a flame war here, I love and own a Dreamcast and 360 and play the crap out of them, but people crying saying “Oh why do I have to play with PC now”? They really need to grow up and realize racing sims are best had on a PC with the full wheel setup and all the accessories with maxed out graphics.
Well, Killer Instinct released on Windows 10 yesterday, and I played it for the first time. I immediately tried the online before even messing with the singleplayer and it was nice to instantly jump into a game vs an Xbox One player as you could tell he had leveled up a lot and been playing for a good while. I played with controller and tried to hold my own but the guy was pretty good vs me being a total noob. I can see how in future Forza games it will be fun with cross play. It was interesting to be able to say I was there to play one of the first cross platform multiplayer games between Xbox One and Windows 10. There was no lag at all and ran really smooth over Xbox live so that is really a great positive first experience.
It’s great news that FM 6 Apex is coming for PC in that it will mean all future Forza games will be on PC as well as Xbox, I have always thought that Forza should be on PC and Microsoft have now realised too which is good for them.
Actually, he’s got a good point. The studio would have been better served making a mobile version of the game for iOS and Android to compute with Real Racing 3, which boasts some staggering user figures worldwide and makes gobs of profits selling pricey in app car purchases.
It’s a demo for the Xbox One version.