A number of Xbox One launch titles like Ryse: Son of Rome and Killer Instinct have seen the arrival of in-game microtransactions, with the latest Forza Motorsport 5 from Turn 10 Studios also joining the list. Since almost all the launch titles for Xbox One are more or less turning to in-game microtransactions, there’s a widespread rumor that microtransactions have actually been mandated by Microsoft for all its games. However, Turn 10 feels that’s not the deal, with Forza Motorsport 5, at least.
Dan Greenawalt, creative director at Turn 10, was recently in an interview with Eurogamer where he spoke about in-game microtransaction and how much of it is related to the recently released Forza Motorsport 5.
“Oh no. Honestly I think, unfortunately, people attribute too much communication to this organization,” Greenawalt stated.
“The truth is, at Turn 10 while I'm a Microsoft employee, we're off-site and we have our own culture and work our product to have our own culture. We have our own process and all of that. For the most part, Microsoft sees it as we're doing a good thing so keep it up, and so we're left alone.”
“But if I'm honest we introduced this in Forza 4 with the car tokens. A lot of people noticed and thought it can be introduced where it's not a paywall, and people don't seem to be up in arms because it's just an accelerator,” he added.
And adding more to the fact that although Forza 4 already had microtransactions with the Token system that players didn’t really mind about, there’s still a lot more to be done with the feature, Greenawalt stated: “I worry - and I don't know this - that we were in some cases the inspiration for some of this in other games. I'd say the biggest inspiration is the way the world is going.”
“This is happening more and more in games, and I understand gamers being resistant, especially if they feel like they're being short-sheeted. I think people are looking out for being short-sheeted, and they're seeing conspiracy where there isn't one.”
“And that's common in today's age. We were definitely not mandated to include these - we were experimenting in Forza 4, we experimented a bit in Horizon and now we're further experimenting in Forza 5. But we experiment a lot of things - and when we get them wrong we try to fix them,” he concluded.
Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport 5 arrived as an Xbox exclusive title when the console was finally made available to the public last month.
