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Forza Motorsport boss Dan Greenawalt retires from Microsoft after 27 years

Dan Greenawalt, who built Turn 10 Studios and directed eight Forza Motorsport games, is leaving Xbox after 27 years, per an internal memo.

By Hank Highscore, Platforms Correspondent ·

Edited by Dot Matrix, Editor-in-Chief

An emptied studio office with a pushed-back chair, a half-packed box with a racing wheel, a toy supercar, and a blank race track on a monitor.
An emptied studio desk as a veteran racing-game founder steps away. Illustration generated by AI.

Xbox is losing the man behind its flagship racing sim. Dan Greenawalt, who founded Turn 10 Studios and directed eight Forza Motorsport games across four Xbox console generations, is retiring from Microsoft after 27 years. 1

The news comes from an internal memo seen by The Verge’s Tom Warren. In it, Playground Games studio head Trevor Williams said Greenawalt “has decided that this is the right time for him to retire.” 1

The timing stands out. Playground, the team behind Forza Horizon, was merged with Turn 10 last month as part of Xbox’s ongoing “reset.” 1

Williams traced Greenawalt’s run from shipping Project Gotham Racing on the original Xbox in 2001 to leading the creation of Forza and founding Turn 10. He also noted the many E3 stage appearances, usually with a supercar in tow. 1

For Forza Motorsport fans who own an Xbox, the picture is quiet. The 2023 game was meant to be a platform that would grow over time, but layoffs hit Turn 10 last year and the remaining team was reportedly moved to support duty on the highly profitable Forza Horizon. Motorsport will not be getting any more new content. 1 The critics were on board throughout: all eight of Greenawalt’s Motorsport games scored 8 out of 10 or higher at IGN. 1

On X, the reaction was a mix of skepticism and jokes. One account wondered whether the word should be “voluntary” retirement, while another quipped that he had finally unlocked free roam. Those are reactions, not reporting. 2

Our read: A founder leaving right after his studio gets folded into its sister team is a changing of the guard, and the series he built is already on a content freeze. That leaves Forza Horizon as the franchise carrying the load. Standings check: Xbox just lost a veteran captain, and players with a Motorsport install have nothing new coming. Nobody scores on that one. Whether Motorsport returns is something to watch, though nothing in the memo promises it.

Footnotes

  1. ign.com, “Forza Motorsport director Dan Greenawalt retires from Microsoft”. Retrieved October 30, 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. X, “Posts on X from @IGN, @TubeStationGame, @milacorleonee”. Retrieved October 30, 2026. ↩

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