Forza has become an annual franchise with the series switching between the main-line series Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon each year, however, usually each title in Microsoft’s series is announced professionally, generally with a shiny new sports car close by to prove how much of a big deal it is. The announcement for Forza Motorsport 7, however, has been a lot less traditional than usual with CEO of Fanatec, a company that primarily makes PC Steering Wheel controllers, Thomas Jackermeier asking players what features they wanted for the upcoming game in an online blog post.
In an update on the blog post talking about the features in FM7, Jackermeier states, “I had a very good meeting with them and I am happy to report that there is a good chance that a lot of things will change for the better in upcoming FM titles. There is a new person who is responsible for physics and force feedback and this is a “wheel guy”. He is a real world racer with car engineering background and very familiar with PC simracing.” I guess he forgot that FM7 hadn’t been announced yet and started talking about the racing wheel enhancements in the game.
Jackermeier also claims that the “PC market seems very important for them (Turn 10) and they are aware that this market is dominated by wheel users. Therefore we will intensify out co-operation and get the best out of the games for wheel users”.
The focus on PC gamers and their controller peripherals makes sense considering Microsoft’s big push towards the PC gaming market recently. Jackermeier’s comments have seemed focused on the PC market for now, especially since they’ve determined the racing market on PC is “dominated by wheel users” but it would be nice to see Fanatec’s peripherals to be supported on Xbox One/Scorpio as well.
Personally, I feel that Forza Motorsport 7 will be one of Microsoft’s biggest tech demos to show at E3 this year in order to show off the power of the upcoming Scorpio console, followed by an obvious launch on Scorpio’s release date and a probably VR support. I mean, what kind of console launches without a racer anyways?
Source: MXDWN
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.