The face of Forza has retired

Dan Greenawalt, so often the face of the Forza Motorsport games, has left the series, according to The Verge’s Microsoft correspondent Tom Warren.

It marks the end of nearly 27 years at Microsoft for the racing game veteran, who has worked in some capacity on every single Forza game, right back to being Lead Game Designer on 2005’s original.

Greenawalt was also involved in other Xbox-exclusive driving titles such as RalliSport Challenge and Project Gotham Racing.

In this time, he was often the one to stand next to a supercar during lavish presentations, mostly hyping up the next Forza game.

“Dan Greenawalt has decided that this is the right time for him to retire from Microsoft,” reads a leaked memo by Playground Games studio head Trevor Williams, picked up by The Verge.

The Vice President and Studio Head for Turn 10 led the team through several successful games, in particular, Forza Motorsport 2 and 4, building loyal fanbases and garnering critical acclaim.

Things took a turn for the worse when the fifth instalment was caught up in the Xbox One launch fiasco, before 6 and 7 recouped some of the losses ahead of a fateful reboot for PC and Xbox Series X|S.

How Turn 10 Studios got here

For 14 years, Microsoft has run two Forza titles within the overarching franchise. The original, Forza Motorsport, which is circuit-based and a Gran Turismo rival, and Forza Horizon, an open-world spin-off.

Motorsport was handled by US-based Turn 10 Studios, while the more accessible Horizon games by UK-based Playground Games.

However, behind the scenes, Traxion understands there has long been a struggle for power, with the plucky Horizon games quickly becoming the most-beloved and best-selling series. Despite this, it had to report to Turn 10, the original Forza creators.

That started to change with 2023’s Forza Motorsport reboot, which had a tricky gestation period, laced with regrettable hyperbole such as the now-infamous “built from the ground up”, only for several assets to be clearly ported from old instalments. This even led to the ironic subreddit of the same name.

Forward-looking support for that game effectively ended in July 2025, when Microsoft made sweeping job cuts, followed by final confirmation in December of that same year.

Last month, Playground subsumed the remnants of Turn 10 in what was billed a ‘merger’.

As Traxion reported then, this meant the end of the ‘Turn 10’ name, the founders of the series.

Alongside Greenawalt’s departure, The Verge has confirmed that under the Playground umbrella, the remaining Turn 10 employees now work at Playground Games Redmond, with the main UK office referred to as Playground Games Leamington Spa.

Meanwhile, Forza Horizon 6 has been delayed for PlayStation 5, but a 26th January 2027 release date has been confirmed, which will launch alongside the game’s first major expansion.