I am worried, but (very) cautiously optimistic for now. Seeing all the panic surrounding Forza Motorsport on a plethora of forums reminds me of this saying about pessimism:
"When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice. Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens". Let's try and keep our spirits high until we know for sure.
Oh the other hand, a pessimist is never disappointed. But I'll try to play the optimist for a second.
The game is at a point where it wasn't likely to get much better than it was even
without the layoffs; it has pretty much all the features you would want from a Forza game, it runs well (at least on Xbox), and many of the current issues with the game are a product of T10's design philosophy and conscious choices rather than a lack of technical polish. The idea that they were going to support it for ten years was always laughable - in 2033 we'll likely be two hardware generations past the one the title was launched on, and Forza's not a title with the niche appeal and consequent staying power of, say, iRacing, or R3E.
It would not be outside of the realm of possibility for
what's left of T10 to keep supporting the game until an eventual end-of-life with additional content and minor improvements, possibly with the aid of PGG and/or offshoring much of the asset creation process (then, weren't the 3d models for Forza already developed by a third party?). After all, as other users have pointed out, half of the studio is still more people than there have ever been at Reiza, or even at Kunos (which is also developing its own engine, and as such makes for a better comparison). Forza Motorsport remains on Gamepass, and dropping a carrot once in a while would help keep engagement numbers high, so there is a potential (small) return of (small) investment for MS.
However, we don't know what's
actually left of T10. The cuts seem to be rather transversal - no single area of development was entirely gutted, but a lot of team leads have been let go. What does that mean? I'll be damned if I know.
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On a separate note,
Mike Caviezel's Linkedin says he was "recently at Turn 10 Studios, working on an unannounced AAA racing title". Now, this I find very interesting. Perhaps there was a sequel to Forza Motorsport already in the works? Was it something else entirely? Perhaps a competitor to RIDE? Or an unannounced, secretive Indycar title - which would explain why T10 was gutted all of a sudden as the Indycar videogame curse claiming yet another victim?
Or perhaps, and I'll try to be serious for a second here, T10 was cooperating closely with Playground on Forza Horizon 6, and the suits at Microsoft realized "wait a second, we already have a sound team at Playground"?
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