At E3 today, Head of Gaming Phil Spencer announced several new investments Microsoft is making to vastly increase our resources for developing original content. It was a direct message to our incredibly dedicated fans who inspire what we do and why we do it. We know you want high quality, innovative content, and we’re committed to bringing you more and more gaming experiences in the years ahead.

As part of this commitment to our fans, and the opportunity to leverage the amazing creative talents of the U.K. development community, I’m delighted to welcome our long-term partner Playground Games and their extraordinarily talented team into the Microsoft Studios family.

Ever since Playground Games was established as a studio, they have partnered exclusively with Turn 10 Studios and, together, both teams’ shared vision, strong partnership, and successful collaboration have advanced the Forza franchise to new heights. The Forza racing franchise saw its biggest year yet in 2017, with over 22 million unique fans driving throughout Forza games. We could not have reached this success without Playground Games’ incredible talent, which resulted in 2016’s award-winning, breakout hit, Forza Horizon 3.

Playground Games’ unique, creative vision and passion, together with the power and resources of Microsoft, will see this innovative team take their talents to an all-new level. Playground Games will continue to work on Forza Horizon and they are bringing their open world expertise to an entirely new project we’ll have more to share about later.

With the close bond already established between Playground Games and Turn 10, it made sense for us to keep that connection intact. I will serve as the Studio Head for the Forza franchise, with both Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios reporting to me.

Announced today, Playground Games is currently working on Forza Horizon 4. Forza Horizon 4 features dynamic seasons in the open world, shared across the entire global community. Including new gameplay, weekly challenges, and stunning visuals, seasons change everything. Experience beautiful, historic Britain in spectacular native 4K and HDR, collect over 450 cars and live the Horizon life together. Playground Games’ development on Forza Horizon 4 will not be interrupted and we are committed to the worldwide launch on Xbox One, Windows 10, and Xbox Game Pass on October 2, 2018 as an Xbox Play Anywhere title.

We hope you are as excited about this as we are. We’re inspired by your passion and can’t wait for you to see what is coming next.