14 DAY TRIAL // Dan Greenawalt, the leader of the development team at Turn 10, says that Microsoft did not have any influence on the decision to include microtransactions in Forza Motorsport 5 because the publisher tends to leave the studio make its own decisions.
In an interview with Eurogamer, the executive states, “The truth is, at Turn 10 while I’m a Microsoft employee, we’re off-site and we have our own culture and work our product to have our own culture. We have our own process and all of that. For the most part, Microsoft sees it as we’re doing a good thing so keep it up, and so we’re left alone.”
He adds, “We were definitely not mandated to include these – we were experimenting in Forza 4, we experimented a bit in Horizon and now we’re further experimenting in Forza 5. But we experiment a lot of things – and when we get them wrong we try to fix them.”
Greenawalt is worried that if microtransactions are successful in Forza Motorsport 5, they might become a common element in other future titles for the Xbox One and some players might blame Turn 10.
At the same time, he is adamant that gamers who love racing can get access to all the content in the title without paying anything and the option is only offered in order to allow those who lack time to get their favorite vehicles and use them.
The problem with Forza Motorsport 5 is that the prices for vehicles were too high and that gamers needed to grind for a while before they could afford the most interesting cars included.
Other Xbox One titles also include microtransactions, although they play a smaller role, and the rival Gran Turismo 6 also allows players to use real-world money to get access to cars at a faster pace.