Forza Street

Turn 10 Studios was established in 2001 by Microsoft, under its Microsoft Game Studios division, to develop a series of racing games, which later became known as Forza, as the Xbox rival to Gran Turismo for PlayStation. At the time of the studio's establishment, most staff had experience in publishing games, such as Project Gotham Racing and Golf 4.0, but had not been involved in game development. The first Forza Motorsport was designed to showcase the technological capabilities of Microsoft's first console, the original Xbox, including its Xbox Live online multiplayer network. From the start, Turn 10's approach to the series has been to broaden its appeal to the general audience and not limit it to racing enthusiasts, passionately highlighting car culture along the way. Also integral to the series' development is the considerable amount of research put into the race cars' handling, sometimes involving professional race teams as of Formula One and NASCAR.

Every Forza title includes an artificial neural network used by its AI racers, called Drivatars, a portmanteau of driver and avatar. Drivatars were developed and designed by Microsoft Research Cambridge to learn and adapt to the player's driving. In early Forza titles, the Drivatars ran on a Bayesian neural network, which calculates possible solutions to a problem and their probabilities based on player data collected from previous races before selecting the one with the highest confidence value. Such a problem may be reaching a certain turn, at which point the appropriate angle at which to turn and the amount of pressure on the accelerator must be determined.

The Forza series is viewed as one of the most recognized brands of the racing genre. The games sold over 10 million copies by August 2014 and 16 million copies as of April 2021, becoming the sixth best-selling racing franchise. It is also one of the highest-grossing video game franchises, grossing over US$1 billion at retail by December 2016. Individually, Forza Motorsport 3 sold 3 million units by February 2010.

3 million copies. 5 million Forza Horizon 3 units were sold. Over 14 million unique players were registered in the Forza community on Xbox One and Windows 10 by December 2016.