Xbox Reportedly Turned Down a Project Gotham Racing Reboot Pitch

gamerant.com:

Most racing games can be divided into two sub-genres. There are sim-racers, which are focused on simulating the real sport of racing as closely as possible, and there are arcade-racers, which are willing to cut back on realism if it makes the game more fun to play. The two first-party Xbox flagship racing games, Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon, neatly cover off these two sub-genres, but before Forza Horizon released in 2012, there was another iconic arcade-racing series on Xbox.

Project Gotham Racing was developed by Bizarre Creations and released for the original Xbox in 2001, meaning the series pre-dates Xbox’s flagship racing series Forza Motorsport. The beloved series continued untilPGR4 on the Xbox 360 released in 2007, but when Bizarre Creations was bought by Activation thePGR series was discontinued.

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The brief chance Project Gotham Racing had of being brought back was turned down by Microsoft, however, as revealed by the Studio Head at Playground Games Trevor Williams in a recent interview with GQ. Reportedly, Williams had pitched Playground Games taking over the PGR series and was immediately declined. The story quickly turned around for Williams after he was asked what Playground Games would do with a Forza spinoff. Williams then, «almost on a napkin» pitched what would go on to become the incredibly successful Forza Horizon series.

Project Gotham Racing and Forza Horizon are quite similar games fundamentally, as both are focused on the style and culture that surrounds the sport of racing rather than the simulation of the racing itself. Forza Horizon builds its races around a seemingly perpetual car festival, while PGR3 introduced Gotham TV, which was an