Forza Motorsport won't have splitscreen at launch due to "heavy investment" in graphics

Forza Motorsport won't include splitscreen at launch.

Several other offerings such as the ability to spectate and to race with AI will be missing from the game's Featured Multiplayer, a new mode which aims to recreate a race weekend experience where races will take place at specific times.

Creative director Chris Esaki revealed Turn 10 has omitted the features during the latest Forza Monthly livestream, and explained why each was not available in the game.

Spectate mode and AI competitors won't be included as it doesn't fit the rules of Featured Multiplayer, Esaki said. "Having players come into a Feature Multiplayer event, and taking players slots, and then spectating, it's not really the racing that we had intended," he stated. "Similarly, racing with AI in Feature Multiplayer, with all its potential impacts on your safety rating, also didn't make a whole lot of sense to have."

"And since we're on the topic of some legacy features that aren't in at launch," Esaki continued, "our heavy investment in pushing our new graphical features and our complete overhaul of the rendering engine unfortunately made splitscreen really difficult to implement, and it's also not going to be in for launch."

Has Turn 10, a first-party studio for Xbox, run into the same issues as Larian Studios with Baldur's Gate 3, where the lesser-powered Xbox Series S is struggling to run split-screen multiplayer?

Forza Motorsport is currently set to launch on 10th October, and the game will appear hands-off, as will Starfield, at Gamescom next week ahead of its release.