Dan Greenawalt Retires as Turn 10 Joins Playground

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Dan Greenawalt, the man who built Microsoft’s Forza racing series and founded Turn 10 Studios, is retiring from Microsoft after 27 years. His exit comes as Turn 10 is absorbed into Forza Horizon developer Playground Games and renamed Playground Games Redmond, effectively closing the chapter on Turn 10 as an independent studio.

The news surfaced through an internal memo from Playground studio head Trevor Williams, first reported by The Verge and summarized by Pure Xbox on October 30, 2026.

A 27-year run that shaped Xbox racing

Greenawalt’s career at Microsoft stretches back to the original Xbox era. He worked on Project Gotham Racing, one of the console’s early showcase titles in 2001, before setting up Turn 10 and leading the creation of Forza Motorsport. Under his watch, Forza grew from a single simulation racer into one of Xbox’s most dependable franchises, later spinning off into the open-world Forza Horizon games made by Playground in the UK.

Fans will also remember him as a regular face at Microsoft’s E3 press briefings, where he often walked out alongside a gleaming supercar to unveil the next game. In his memo, Williams praised Greenawalt’s legacy, writing that “it’s hard to overstate Dan’s impact” over nearly three decades, and thanked him for his leadership and partnership.

Turn 10 becomes Playground Games Redmond

The retirement follows a structural shake-up that Xbox first outlined in September. On September 22, 2026, Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty said in a memo published on Xbox Wire that Turn 10 and Playground would be combined into one studio focused on the Forza and Fable franchises. The same restructuring eliminated 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party teams and central management, according to GTPlanet.

At the time, Microsoft did not say what the merged team would be called or who would run it. The new name answers that question: the Washington-based group now operates as Playground Games Redmond, under the Playground banner, and is helping with development on Forza Horizon and Playground’s long-awaited Fable reboot.

The combination is less surprising than it looks. Turn 10’s in-house ForzaTech engine already powers the Horizon series and Fable, and in December 2025 the Redmond team shifted much of its effort to helping Playground finish Forza Horizon 6. Turn 10 had also been hit hard by Microsoft’s July 2025 layoffs, which reportedly cost the studio close to half its staff.

What it means for Forza Motorsport

The bigger question for racing fans is whether Forza Motorsport has a future. The 2023 reboot has been in maintenance mode, and the official Forza site said in December 2025 that no further content updates were planned. Microsoft has not formally cancelled the series, but with its founding studio folded into Playground and its creator heading into retirement, a brand-new Motorsport game looks unlikely any time soon.

For now, the Forza name lives on mainly through Horizon. Pure Xbox has separately reported that Forza Horizon 6’s first premium expansion is planned for January 2027, timed with the game’s PlayStation 5 launch, a sign of how central the open-world series has become to Microsoft’s multiplatform strategy.

Key details

Who: Dan Greenawalt, founder of Turn 10 Studios and creator of the Forza series
What: Retiring from Microsoft after 27 years
Studio change: Turn 10 is now part of Playground Games and renamed Playground Games Redmond
Current work: Supporting Forza Horizon and Fable development
Background: Merger announced September 22, 2026, alongside 268 Xbox job cuts

Greenawalt leaves behind a series that helped define Xbox for more than two decades. Whether the simulation side of Forza ever returns may now depend on how Playground Games Redmond chooses to use the expertise he spent a career building.

Sources: Pure Xbox (citing The Verge), GTPlanet.