Today, Xbox announced that the original studio behind its popular racing franchise, Forza, will be merging with the team behind the even more popular Forza Horizon spin-off franchise to create one larger studio and team that will be focused on Forza and Fable.
On September 22, Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty shared a memo on Xbox Wire announcing more layoffs and corporate shake-ups at the company. This is the next part of Xbox’s big reset that started with 1600 layoffs and some major restructuring back in July. As part of this next stage of the reset, Booty confirmed more layoffs across Xbox, and that Forza Horizon developer Playground Studios and Forza creator Turn 10 will “come together as one studio.”
“Playground and Turn 10 will come together as one studio focused on the Forza and Fable franchises,” said Booty. “These two studios have been creative and franchise partners for over a decade, and today’s changes will formally move their work into one team.”
Playground has become a very important studio for Xbox. The team’s Forza Horizon open-world spin-off series has become one of Xbox’s biggest franchises in recent years, and the studio is also finishing up the highly anticipated reboot of the Fable RPG series, which is expected to launch in February 2027.
Meanwhile, Turn 10 has had a much rougher experience with Xbox in recent years. In 2025, the original Forza Motorsport creator was hit with a large round of layoffs that reportedly left the team operating with a skeleton crew. It was also reported that a planned new Forza Motorsport was canceled. The last new Forza game from Turn 10 was released in 2023. It’s unclear what will happen to the original Forza Motorsport series. It’s also unclear if Turn 10 will just become Playground Studios, or vice versa, or a new studio will be formed.
Update: 9/22/26, 11:45 a.m. ET: When asked about how the merger between Turn 10 and Playground will work, Xbox told Kotaku that there is no new studio name. Instead, Xbox confirmed that Playground co-founder and studio head Trevor Williams will continue to lead Playground Games. That seems to imply Turn 10 is no longer a studio and has been fully absorbed by Playground Games.
