Turn 10 Becomes Playground Games Redmond as Dan Greenawalt Retires

Turn 10 Studios has been integrated into Playground Games and the Redmond team is now operating as Playground Games Redmond, ending Turn 10’s run as a standalone Xbox studio.

The restructured Redmond team will work with Playground Games on Forza Horizon and Fable. The change and retirement plans were first reported by The Verge’s Tom Warren from an internal memo and independently summarized in focused coverage from Notebookcheck.

Dan Greenawalt, Turn 10’s founder and the longtime creative leader behind Forza Motorsport, is also retiring from Microsoft after 27 years. Playground Games studio head Trevor Williams told employees that Greenawalt will remain temporarily as an adviser during the transition.

Greenawalt’s career at Microsoft stretched back to Project Gotham Racing on the original Xbox. He later led the creation of Forza, founded Turn 10 and became one of the most recognizable figures associated with Microsoft’s racing games.

The move follows Microsoft’s previously announced consolidation of Playground Games and Turn 10. Playground now operates from two locations: its established Leamington Spa team and the newly named Redmond group.

The Redmond team’s assignment also brings existing technical ties into a single studio structure. We previously covered how Fable uses the ForzaTech engine, technology historically developed with Turn 10’s racing projects in mind.

Microsoft has not announced that Forza Motorsport is canceled. No new Motorsport game has been revealed, however, and Turn 10’s disappearance as a standalone studio — combined with its staff moving onto Playground’s Forza Horizon and Fable work — leaves the track-racing series’ future increasingly uncertain.

What do you think Playground Games Redmond’s creation means for the future of Forza Motorsport?