The team at Turn 10 have officially confirmed that Forza Motorsport 4 is in development and will be released in fall 2010 for the Xbox 360.
The confirmation details also include the news that it will feature support for Kinect, in addition to the classic Forza controls. The news was accompanied by an announcement trailer, which you can see here, plus four images, which at this stage, don’t reveal much, aside from the menu overlay pictured here, as it’s not clear how close these will be to in-game footage etc.
What we can start to infer from the announcement and video is that the Ford GT40 will play a big part in the game and promotion, as it’s the hero car of the first video and screenshots. That may be influenced by the ownership of one Jeremy Clarkson, seeing as the first announcement in conjunction with the U.S. Top Gear team, and the Top Gear logo is prominently displayed at the end of the video alongside Microsoft and Turn 10. The screenshots are also very likely to be an airfield type setting, which is where a certain BBC car show has located the Top Gear test track.
In addition, the video also features night cycles, cars driving off-road, and a mix of circuit and road clips, which hopefully means longer endurance races featuring changing conditions, and possibly the addition of rallying.
Obviously we’ll be covering every bit of information we can about Forza Motorsport 4, which is likely to be the biggest game of 2011 for console racing, but it would be great to hear your wishlist for FM4 in the comments below.
Ok, I’ll start with a quick brain dump of stuff I’d love to see incorporated into FM4 or any other racing / driving game/s moving forward.
Dynamic weather
Night / day cycles
Much better tyre/tire smoke / dust / debris / dirt effects that are dynamic (i.e dust lingers but dissipates gradually taking into account wind / cars moving through dust clouds etc
Public lobby control given back to the masses
Tuning online
12 players upwards online per lobby
Reintroduce Forza TV so spectators can watch any races
Upload to video / Picture sharing sites from in game
Faster transfer to home computers / laptops of replays / movies / pictures
Utilise / Utilize the online racing communities requirements for league racing, making this the first game to entirely cater for online racing leagues. Guaranteed audience. The paint editor already goes a long way
Bring out new M$ Wheel for around the same cost as the old discontinued one, building into it better quality to address all the returns and faults from the old
In car damage effects
Virtual moving of seats and steering wheels for better in car driving positions (instead of % angle in multi screen trick)
Better steering wheel support….no looking around with a wheel!! you sure!! most wheel users will be in car I’d assume, so looking around is important.
Greater feel from the cars physics. I specifically find pushing beyond the limits and staying in control on FM3 is not a skill as such, more of an understanding of the games limitations in comparison to other racing games that reward pushing beyond a cars limits and remaining in control.
Punctures / blowouts
lights / wipers controlled by users
tyre / tire degradation according to tyre / tire types chosen, the track surface, temperature, driving style etc and not the same for all cars
Same as above for fuel, with the ability to chose fuel levels and maybe mixtures
Much much more but it’s a start
Matt aka GT Magictap
Blimey – and that’s just your quick brain dump! I don’t think there’s anything in there I’d argue with…
Cheers Dan, any to add of your own? And Merry Christmas and happy new years. Just a thought on the on-line leagues area that would help. Future driving racing games catering for the mammoth time consuming task of sorting out lobbies.
A true racing game catering for on-line racing leagues will have different options & settings available to the organiser/s & or lobby captains that link lobbies together virtually, not only for automatically timing and lobby qualifying and sorting, but also options for things like the ability to deploy virtual safety cars in each linked lobby when called from any of the linked lobbies, thereby giving the option to all race the same race virtually, albeit without the traffic in each lobby, but maybe some way adding time on for lower lobbies for being further back on the grids etc. Anything that can take on-line racing toward racing as one in the same race even if the hardware technology wont currently enable / allow / cope with 100’s of racers!!
Merry Christmas to you too! I think the main thing for me is increasing the realism, without making it impossible for people to have fun – which seemed to be more of the case in FM2.