Forza Motorsport 5 developer Turn10 had stressed that it isn’t holding back cars for the purpose of post-launch DLC, and that complaints aimed at the team suggest that some people don’t know how these things work.
Speaking with OXM, creative director Dan Greenawalt said, “We’re not keeping anything back. I think people misunderstand the way these things work. It takes us six months to build a car, so when I say there’s a ten-car pack launching day one – they’re not done. We’re not done with them yet.
“So we’re not holding anything back, we were crunching to make sure we had this level of quality on all 200 cars. Every one had to be Forza level of quality. This was as many as we could build – straight up. We’ve built this whole process.”
He added, “It’s a bit like firing artillery. We started building these cars in waves, so the 200 would be done just in time to get it printed for disc, and we started, three or four months later, the first of the ten that are going to be delivered on day one, and about a month after that we start the first of the ten that are going to be delivered the month following. The whole thing is timed so that we’re getting them done right before we launch them.”
Greenawalt explained that it takes the studio six months to accurately model a new car in-game and that this makes it hard to stay fresh, even with data straight from the manufacturers. He added, “And if you want to have a hot car, you need to start it as late as possible, which means finishing it as late as possible. And that’s why DLC has worked so well for us, because we can start shooting these artillery shots. So the whole idea that things are being held back…”
