Hello everybody, and welcome to the all-new Forzamotorsport.net, official home of the Forza Motorsport franchise and developer Turn 10. Now, before I get on with all the good stuff in our inaugural Forza Pitpass Report, bear with me for just a moment so I can get the following pent-up words out of my system: Forza Motorsport 3. Forza Motorsport 3. Forza Motorsport 3. Forza Motorsport 3. And Forza-frickin-Motorsport 3!
Phew.
Those of you who have been following my weekly updates here at FM.net know just how long I've wanted to write this special Forza Pitpass Report. Now that the gag order's been lifted by our marketing ninjas, I'm excited to confirm what you've probably been suspecting for ages now: Forza Motorsport 3, exclusive for the Xbox 360, is real and it's accelerating to a retail joint near you this holiday season. As a three-and-a-half year veteran here at Turn 10, as well as community manager on the project, this is technically the first Forza title I've been involved with from inception to execution (and hopefully beyond).
With the game nearing its final phases of development, I have to admit that I'm in a bit of a "dream job" situation here, working within the eye of Forza 3 storm on an amazing journey with the team. The fact that my community team and I can now speak openly to provide context and detail about this labor of love has Landin, Phred, and I very excited for the months to come.
I'm not going to take up this space regurgitating the Forza 3 fact sheet, which, by the way, is something all of you should peep first before we go any further. But what the heck, I'll summarize because some of these bullet points still stun me a little to this day.
The Forza 3 treasure trove looks something like this: More than 400 cars, with each vehicle model re-built from the ground up with 10x the number of details compared to its predecessor Forza 2. Plus, detailed cockpit views for all 400+ cars, each with working gauges (including race cars and digital multi-function displays). Over 115 tracks located on some of the most technical circuits and scenic road courses in the world. Improved physics engine and tire flex modeling in a racing "sim" that's never been easier to pick-up and play thanks to our powerful new driving assists.
These are but just a few of the new features you can look forward to with Forza 3. But we've barely even scratched the surface of what's to come. To say that this is an epic racing game would suggest you've already seen a game similar in scope, features, and elegance like Forza 3 and I'm willing to wager you haven't. There simply hasn't ever been a game as complete as Forza 3 and until we hit our shelf date, there won't be a racing game on the market that even comes close.
Seeing as this is the first official Forza Pitpass Report of a new age, and the fact that there's a little trade show by the name of E3 happening just outside my window here in Los Angeles, we have a lot of ground to cover here so I'm going to go right into specifics. Also, please pardon my bullishness about Forza 3 -- it is honestly a direct result of being excited for a game I can't wait to experience from beginning to end in its polished, finished, state. Honest.
So in no special order of importance, here's a bit more detail on the following:
The new Forzamotorsport.net and the Forza Pitpass Report. For those of you who are new to FM.net, welcome! My name is Che Chou (aka chespace), community guy for Turn 10 and I run this site with fellow community teamsters Landin Williams and Phred Howell. If you should have any questions or concerns, please email us at forzafb@microsoft.com. If you're an old hand at FM.net and the Forza community, you'll have noticed that we now have a spankin' new site. Hopefully, the layout and navigation is pretty self-explanatory. As an ever-evolving franchise site, nearly all of Forzamotorsport.net is focused on our latest and greatest; if you're looking for Forza 2 info and online features, we've dedicated a section to Forza 2 with links to the web Auction House, your stats and photos, and the scoreboards.
As for this Forza Pitpass Report that you're currently reading -- this is the space you want to keep an eye on for all the future announcements and details we'll be divulging from now until the day Forza 3 releases, and beyond when we've moved onto DLC. If you're interested in Turn 10 shenanigans and what we do when we're not crunching on trying to finish a game, keep up with us on our blog. If you prefer the new-fangled Twitterverse, you can follow our blood, sweat, and tears at http://twitter.com/turn10studios/.
E3 2009 - aka the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Forza 2 made its debut at E3 2006 so it should come as no surprise to anyone that we decided to unveil Forza 3 in the same manner. Except, instead of showing just a teaser trailer, we're going big at E3 this year. Some of you may have been watching the Microsoft E3 keynote presentation and caught a glimpse of Turn 10 game director Dan Greenawalt up on stage doing a demo of Forza 3. We've also got quite an expansive footprint on the E3 show floor at the Microsoft booth, including two massive triple-screen simulator pods powered by a hydraulic system wired up to our physics engine, providing for a Forza 3 experience you simply can't experience anywhere else.
Then there are, of course, normal kiosks for show goers to get hands-on with Forza 3, as well as a couple standard non-hydraulic triple-screen racing seats. Yup, we pulled out all the stops in terms of hardware for this show. As for Turn 10, all week long we'll be working the show floor, manning demo units while Dan and I will be meeting with an endless stream of games press and journalists to do deeper behind-closed-doors demos and interviews. On Tuesday evening, Turn 10 is also throwing a Forza 3 announcement party for auto enthusiasts, Forza community folks, and a handful of celebs who want to swing by and be the first to play Forza 3. All in all, it's whirlwind, heat, and flash this week at E3 as we kickoff our countdown to release. Be sure to check back here on Forzamotorsport.net all week long as we release exclusive screenshots, our special E3 podcast episode, and updates from the show on the official Turn 10 Blog.
.jpg?n=2028 "Wheel-to-wheel action on Montserrat's Camino Viejo circuit.")
Forza 3 Screenshots and Videos. We released a generous helping of Forza Motorsport 3 screenshots and videos this week. If you haven't seen them yet, go check 'em out in our Media Gallery. There are some things you should know about these screenshots. First of all, at Turn 10, we don't bullshot -- which means everything you see here is real-time taken from in-game gameplay. The E3 batch was taken back in early May, and given how the development process works, the game is improving just about daily, so the bottomline is that these screenshots are from a work-in-progress. Naturally, the game will actually look better by the time it comes out later this fall. The reason why you might have mistaken these screenshots as faked, touched-up, or embellished art is because Forza 3 is an exceedingly gorgeous game.
There's really no bigger graphics junkie than myself at Turn 10 and I'm constantly surprised by just how insanely next generation the game looks from a visual standpoint. Not only have the cars themselves gotten much more detailed, our 100+ tracks in the game provide some truly inspired locales to fuel your car passion. Much of the leap in graphical fidelity with Forza 3 was made possible by our game engine developers, whom, in the early days (think summer of 2007) set out to rebuild a new renderer and content pipeline for Forza 3. So just like before, Forza 3 runs at a glassy smooth 60 frames-per-second, with our physics calculating underneath the hood at a much higher framerate. New shaders and tech puts the finishing touches on an already handsome Forza Motorsport 2. Likewise, with the gameplay video, everything was captured in-game with no faked CG whatsoever. At Turn 10, we don't do bullshots.
I'm going to wrap up Forza Pitpass Report #1 (I hit the reset button -- see how that works?) now and get back to the grind at E3 before returning back to Seattle. Enjoy the new site, our new and official Forza 3 forum, as well as all the new screenshots of the game. Check back often as we plan to update y'all on how Forza 3 is shaping up each week from here until release. Thanks for visiting Forzamotorsport.net and I'll talk to you soon. Real soon.
Che Chou
Community Manager
Turn 10 Studios
