Forza Motorsport 6 is the 2015 ‘Racing Game of the Year’

Huayra_Apex-!
Is there a better marriage of car and track? May 8th, 2016, courtesy of yours truly.

Just earlier this year we were commending the Turn 10 team for exceeding the coveted 1 million sales figure for Forza Motorsport 6.

While a small feat for the franchise, as it has consistently sold more than 1 million copies since inception, it was unable to move as many copies as Forza Motorsport 5 –”the fastest-selling racing game in Xbox history” – in roughly the same amount of time. Nonetheless, the accolade is an impressive one all the same.

In addition to celebrating a milestone sales figure, at this year’s annual D.I.C.E. Awards ceremony Forza 6 was named the 2015 Racing Game of the Year, coming ahead of competition from the likes of Need For Speed and Project CARS, both also released in 2015.

Forza 6 was the first title in the Motorsport franchise to simulate wet-weather racing. Turn 10 visited real-world tracks and observed where puddles formed to recreate them in-game; these puddles appeared in the same locations and would react just as they would in the real-world, causing the cars to skid or hydroplane if driven through.

Rocket-League-MM
Rocket League takes ‘car soccer’ to new, addictive levels.

Another title that’s been recognized by D.I.C.E. was fan-favorite, Rocket League. The wildly popular game took home three awards, the most interesting of which was the Sprite Award, which honors a game that has disproportionate resources (i.e. budget) for development and advertising in comparison to AAA titles. Rocket League is one of only four titles that received three awards; the other two it took home being Sports Game of the Year, and Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay.

Martin Rae, President of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences stated that the various games and platforms featured have “come to represent the changing face of our industry.” For the full list of award-winners at the 19th D.I.C.E. Awards, feel free to have a look here.

Comments (58)

  1. GTP_CargoRatt

    Game of the Year….just like I knew it would. : ) I switched to Forza for a reason and now you all know why….greatest game of this genre hands down.

  2. TomBrady

    That’s ridiculous. Project Cars is completely superior overall and 6 is the worst Forza yet. The physics have got worse and worse as time has gone by.

    1. cfc

      kid,its 2016,time to learn to troll
      Nothing comes even close to Forza 6
      Tho im enjoying some deluded GT fans “posts” :D
      Especially hater and cheap troll like TomyyBraddyyy :D

    2. Johnnypenso

      I like Project Cars and have never played Forza but at a glance Forza has PCars beat hands down in terms of the car roster, smoothness of gameplay and overall graphics consistency IMO. PCars probably wins in terms of physics, track count and offline career. Superior overall is just too subjective in this genre and I can see either game appealing in different ways to a huge chunk of sim racers and for many, both are a good option.

  3. MrWaflz55

    Dice really loves the Forza series. Gran Turismo hasn’t been on since 3 A-spec, I kind of expected GT4 to be on that list too.

  4. johnnyman123

    Currently building a new computer capable of running games in 4K. I cant wait to try forza 6 in 4K, I just hope all Forza and the Horizon series come to PC in its fullest form, not just a horrible watered down verison of it.

    1. TomBrady

      Good luck running Forza 6 Apex at 1080p, let alone 4k. It’s literally the most poorly optimized game I’ve ever installed on any PC

    2. TheAdmiester

      @TomBrady Uhhhh, what? Forza Apex is far and away the best optimised PC port I’ve seen this decade. I can still achieve 60FPS at 4K with all settings maxed out (even 8xMSAA which is ridiculous) on a single 980Ti.

  5. wallpaper42

    Damn I got bored of Forza 6 so fast but when you think of the other racing games that came out in 2015 none were really on the same level as Forza. Project Cars definitely didn’t hold my attention as long…

    Dirt Rally deserves an honorable mention at least though. That game is fantastic.

  6. Jump_Ace

    At first I lol’d, but it’s okay. Anything that raises the competitive level to bring about higher quality games is fine with me. Hopefully, PD will raise the bar.

    Jerome

  7. panjandrum

    Let’s hope that Forza 6 for PC supports all wheels properly. It’s a game I’m eager to try (I still retain hope of finding something really full-featured with different types of events and lots of tracks like a GT-series game (thinking GT4 here in my mind) but with truly great physics and FFB (thinking AC here in my mind), and with amazing graphics (thinking PCars here in my mind). Someone, somewhere, needs to bring a true “ultimate SIM” like this to reality, so we can quit futzing with one product for one thing and another one for something else and a third or fourth one for yet another thing. It’s just a pain. Would love to give Forza a try again (last time I tried it the XBOX ecosystem was still so encumbered by poor FFB wheel support that there was really no way to take the entire Forza franchise seriously at all. It’s gotta work with my wheels or I’m not going to touch it. Period. It’s too much money to invest in special wheels just for Forza.)

    1. Johnnypenso

      Same here. I was so stoked to hear they were coming to pc and then just as bummed when I heard no wheel support. Hopefully they don’t go the console route and only use drivers for a handful of “official” wheels and do like every other sim instead and get every popular wheel available to work with the game.

    2. MrWaflz55

      lol, if you don’t jump to Forza then you might be waiting a very long time for another full GT experience.

    3. Imari

      It’s PC, so any wheel support will quickly become all wheel support.

      PC doesn’t support my DS3 as a controller, but that doesn’t stop me playing with it. ;)

  8. ImaRobot

    It’s a bit sad how any Forza article seems to bring about the worst people. Would be nice to see such things not to devolve into such situations just because its a rival game to the one this site focus’ on. I just don’t know how much misinformation and false roomers can be spread, intentional or otherwise.

    1. MeanElf

      Trust me, the same happens for ‘the other game’ too – this site just harbours some pretty odious people I’m afraid.

    2. BrunetPaquet

      There’s all kinda people all over the internet. It’s about ignoring the trolls and not feeding them, because the more you argue with them (AKA feed ’em) the worse they’ll go.

      Ignore ’em and they’ll go back to hiding below a bridge.

  9. Mickeman

    Ouch, a lot of butt hurt when a PlayStation based game site reports that an Xbox game got an award LOL :-)

  10. Double-T

    Am I wrong, or isn’t widespread wheel support an ongoing issue in FM6? Seems ludicrous to give an award to a racing game that most people play with a controller as opposed to a wheel.

    1. Imari

      So basically you’re saying that the award should be given to iRacing, because that’s probably the only game I can think of where more people play with a wheel.

    2. TomBrady

      @Imari HAHAHAHA are you serious? You really think it’s just iracing? Every sim on PC, more people play with a wheel. Not just iracing. Not to mention how many people play pCars on PS4 with a wheel. I wouldn’t say it’s “most” of the players but it’s getting there.

    3. ImaRobot

      It’s no where near “most” on console. It’s a niche peripheral on console. On a PC it makes sense, because you don’t have a controller to start with in the first place. It’s all common sense, really.

    4. Johnnypenso

      Even GT5, which had most every wheel in existance supported, routinely had around 20% or less of TT entrants using a wheel. I imagine the numbers are far fewer on PS4 given the far smaller number of wheels supported and rising costs of peripherals.

  11. WyldAnimal

    I would Have Given the Award to pCars.
    It has done More for the Racing Genre, than Forza has.
    Especially Since pCars is Multi-Platform, and Forza is only on Xbox.

    Hands Down, pCars should have received the Award for what it has contributed to the racing Genre as a whole!

    1. lxmmy

      What? It provided more frustration to a gamers through the amount of bugs the game had from day one.

    2. JohnScoonsBeard

      I agree with you Wyld I would have chosen Project Cars too. Forza 6 is still a great game but for the nearest thing to racing a car Project Cars is way ahead on console and also the best overall Sim experience for me on PC. So far I think Dirt Rally leads the way this year.

    3. E28

      It provided… lets see: Bugs, bugs, bugs, questionable early access model, bugs, bugs… arrogant devs, bugs!

    4. RodolphoPNeto

      Well, i agree with you when it comes to the game itself, as pCars does everything the way most racing sim fans want, and i enjoy it more than any of the current ones. But FM is bigger, more popular, way more casual… I’d compare pCars to a supercar, and FM6 to a SUV :)

    5. ImaRobot

      Pcars was definitely a good game, but it was plagued with many problems and still has consistency issues.

    6. breyzipp

      I fully agree with WyldAnimal. Project CARS did have/has its issues but it brought a fresh breed of air through the racing genre that definately makes it deserve the racing game of the year for 2015. Forza 6 is a decent game as well but in the end it hardly brings much more to the table than Forza 5 already did, it just has some more cars and more tracks and that’s basically it. Wet and night racing existed many years in other games as well, some even do it with a dynamic weather system (GT6, Project CARS, …) so I would hardly call it innovative or make that the reason to give FM6 the title. FM6 does have an overall very polished feeling though (not hard when it’s basically Forza 5.1) and I have to admit I like the large amount of cars it offers and Forza Vista, those 2 things make FM6 differentiate from the competition. But certainly not the racing itself.

    7. WyldAnimal

      I’ll Mention just ONE. and While it’s not on the Console, it’s on the PC but it Alone should have moved pCars to the Front.
      VR on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, That is a Game Changer!

    1. Obelisk

      You mean full-speed drifting being faster than gripping, turbo boosts out of drifting, karts that magically transform into planes and boats? You’ve got the wrong genre.

    2. TomBrady

      Actually it was a pretty good year considering we got pCars. pCars was brilliant and better than any forza ever made

    3. cfc

      If you see Forza news here you can bet your house TomBrady aka mister Anti Forza will be here with his idiotic cheap trolling.
      Must be sad days when you have such hate,yet every time coming to show how deluded you are :D
      Forza absolutely smashed all racing games,pCars? Dont make me laugh,any player who at least playing racing games more than 15years knows that Forza literally wipes floor with 99.99 racing games.
      It was best yer for racing considering we got that astonishing Racing Game of Year in FORZA 6 :)))
      P.S.rip TomBrady

    4. Obelisk

      Oh, and CFC? I’ve played racing games since I was 6 years old, or about 15 years ago. “Any player who play racing games at least 15 years”, right? I will tell you right now, Forza does NOT beat the other sims. It is simply a more accessible sim than the other ones on the market – comparing it to pCars or any other sim is closer to apples and oranges than apples and apples. Each one does something different, and that’s a niche market in itself. Forza has a livery editor and a fair bit of customization, pCars seems to be more bone-stock cars, etc. Every game has pros and cons, it’s simply preference.

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