In a segment of a large interview posted on the Forza Motorsport website, Dan Greenawalt – the game’s director – has blamed EA for Forza 4’s lack of Porsche cars. All Porsches will be RUF variants, like in almost every other racing game.
This is apparently because EA owns the exclusive rights to the Porsche license in videogames. Forza 3 only had Porsches because of a sub licensing deal which EA are unwilling to allow this time around, presumably because they want to push their own competing racing brand, Need for Speed: Shift.
According to Greenawalt, Turn 10 owns a similar license for Ferrari cars featured on the PC and Xbox 360 but has always allowed those cars to be used in other games because they believe that keeping those cars out of other games “would do nothing but hurt the racing ecosystem”.
Nobody can blame EA for protecting their licence and refusing to allow a competitor to use it. That makes good business sense. However, as a Forza fan, I just want as many manufacturers and models as possible in my game. Similarly when it comes time for Shift 3, if Turn 10 decides to retaliate and withhold Ferrari’s from EA’s track racer, I’d be disappointed at their absence.
Add to that the fact that Forza 3 contained 35 different Porsches, Greenawalt claims they intended to put more in Forza 4, and EA’s Shift 2 had only a handful. However well reasoned the business decision, this is a shame for gamers and it has the potential to get much worse if companies start to scrap over licenses in the future.
Source: Forza Motorsport
JesseDeya
Since when do Turn 10 own the rights to Ferrari in racing games? I’d be f’d and amazed if Ferrari allowed that.
Gadbury
Yes, I find this hard to believe.
pitbullmern
Isnt this the same reason why outrun arcade online was removed from psn because sega no longer held the license for ferraris as they where now held by microsoft or Turn 10?
scion_tc1
This Upsets me. I find it a disgusting with all this license BS the car companies should sell full licences which covers ALL their cars and said licence shouldn’t be exclusive to one company and that one company shouldn’t get to decide who else gets to use it. EA you have let me down, again. Turn 10 you had better not have pulled/pull this s**t on EA otherwise your just as bad, be the bigger man.