Xbox One launch title Forza Motorsport 5 has been confirmed to include 14 tracks and 200 cars, halving the amount seen in Forza 4 where players could jump onto 26 tracks and mix it up with over 500 unique automobiles. 

This is not a good thing for Car enthusiasts, with Suzuka, Infineon Raceway and even the Nurburgring being entirely removed from the game. According to Creative Director Dan Greenawalt, they do not meet the standards of Forza’s next-gen aims. 

“Some of the tracks needed updating,” said Greenawalt. “Some of them needed light updating, and some of them needed heavy updating. Silverstone, for example, was a complete recapture. Several of our tracks were just plain wrong, either because they were poorly captured and technology’s moved on, or the track’s changed like Silverstone.” 

He continues: 

“We’re grading the tracks on what state they’re in, and if they didn’t make the grade they were gone. For me it was less about do I want to deliver this or want to deliver that, I wanted to deliver the next-generation quality – and that meant having the shaders, and the imperfections in the concrete. And the easiest way to get those is to laser scan the track, as that captures those imperfections. We had old references on tracks where if the tracks we had were close we were able to go back to the old reference and recreate that imperfection. By definition that means these tracks take more time than ever.”

It may be worth giving some perspective, Gran Turismo 6 is looking to have 39 tracks and nearly 1,200 vehicles. However it isn’t all doom and gloom, whilst the list of items you can use is shorter, there is more diversity, with open-wheel cars such as the McLaren M23 making their first appearance in the series. Is it possible that some courses are being held back for additional DLC? Let us know what you think in the comments below.