One of the Forza Motorsport series’ greatest strengths is the way it tackles its car roster, and Turn 10 has been improving on this forte for several instalments. Forza Motorsport, its most recent edition included, has an admirable knack for assembling garages that embrace car culture from all over the globe without a disproportionally large focus on vehicles from just a single region or country. You won't find 135 Nissans and only 12 Ferraris here.Forza Motorsport 6, like previous games in the series, understands what makes a boxy old 1981 Ford Fiesta just as important to some players as the game’s hot new cover car, the 2017 Ford GT. With the amount of resources and effort it takes to create each one of them, both end up as equals inside Forza 6. Forza 6 is by no means the only game capable of lining up cult favourites alongside brand new models (the Gran Turismo series is regularly brimming with almost-forgotten JDM curiosities, and UK teams Codemasters and Slightly Mad Studios can always be depended on for some old school racing icons) but I feel the difference with Forza is its commitment to truly making sure as many regions as possible are represented somehow.“We have a super supportive team at Turn 10,” says Jeremy Hinton, Xbox Lead for Microsoft Australia. “So we support the game and we put our hands up to say, ‘Our fans would like to see this.’”
This is part of how some of the content that matters most to a racing fan like myself finds its way into Forza Motorsport.
What we saw with Forza Motorsport 5 is that Australia is now, per capita, the place where Forza is the most popular.
“What we saw with Forza Motorsport 5 is that Australia is now, per capita, the place where Forza is the most popular,” says Hinton. “It’s because we're doing these things, saying, ‘Hey, we think V8 Supercars is really important, and we think Bathurst is really important.’ And they get in, and you know what? The fans embrace it, love it, and buy the game.“
“The team sees how much we back it from a marketing perspective as well, with our 2013 Wild Card at Bathurst [for instance]. And so, if we’re a team that’s putting our hand up and saying, ‘Hey, we think we know what our consumers want in this market’ and we’re prepared to put our money where our mouth is to make this stuff happen, then they’re such a supportive and collaborative team that they do everything they can to make that happen.
“Turn 10 knows that a love of cars is an individual thing. Having a long list of cars in a game doesn’t matter unless it includes the one that means something to you personally. So the team there have been very supportive of including a diverse range of international cars in Forza Motorsport for some time. We’re fortunate in having a partner in Turn 10 that is open to the ideas of our Xbox Australian team around what content will resonate with local fans.”Forza Motorsport isn’t the only racing series to feature V8 Supercars and other Australian content. Codemasters made a trio of fantastic racers featuring the real-life series back in the 2000s and has since reintroduced Bathurst, V8 Supercars, an even V8 racing utes to the Grid series. Hardcore, subscription-based sim racer iRacing also features V8 Supercar content, plus Australian tracks like Bathurst, Phillip Island, and the sadly-demolished Oran Park. I do, however, feel Forza arguably sets the best modern example. Forza Motorsport 6, for instance, features all five current V8 Supercars manufacturers for the first time; important, considering just how tribal motorsport and car enthusiasm is. Six-time Bathurst 1000 winner Mark Skaife agrees.
“Oh, 100 per cent,” says Skaife. “I think that’s a really big factor. It’s sort of easy to say, ‘Hey, we should include V8s in the game, because it’s the V8 event at Bathurst’, but then if you don’t include them all, you’re sort of semi-playing favourites.”
“For me, to have the Mercedes, to have the Volvo and the Nissan included – outside what has been the tradition Ford versus Holden rivalry – I think, internationally people get it. We get a lot of feedback about people in Japan following the Nissans, or people from Sweden following the Volvos. To have what I feel is the authentic feel of the new era of V8 Supercar racing, with those manufacturers blended into the game, is fantastic.”So are there other territories looking to Australia – and the success that stems from making the effort to include things that matter to local players – and putting their own hands up, requesting similar love?
“Totally, yeah,” says Hinton. “I mean, that’s the thing about motorsport passion. It is very local, and you care about the one or two cars that matter to you. We can put 450 cars in Forza Motorsport 6 but invariably there’s going to be, say, five that you’re really passionate about and that you really want to drive.”
“So I think they’re doing their best to note that things like V8 Supercars are really important, and those markets where there is motorsport passion – Sweden and Germany and places like that – that we’ve got those things in there that those people care about too.”
Forza Motorsport 6 is available now. You can check out IGN’s review here. Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can find him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.