Back in January 2023 we heard the news that several lead developers on Forza Horizon 5 were splitting off to make their own studio, and now that studio has struck a publishing deal for its first title. Amazon Games will be partnering with the team on this project - currently known to be an "open world, AAA, premium" release.
As per VGC, the game will release on Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and PC, marking a departure from the Xbox-exclusive development environment lots of these Forza Horizon devs were once used to.
Having said that, plenty of other games will seemingly influence this new open world racer, including the likes of GRID, Dirt and Just Cause. Here's a list of some of the 62-person strong team and their backgrounds in racing game development:
Executive producer Tom Butcher (Forza Horizon Series, F1 All-Stars), CTO Matt Craven (Forza Horizon Series, GRID, DIRT), content director Gareth Harwood (Forza Horizon Series, Fable reboot), audio director Fraser Strachan (Forza Horizon Series), art director Ben Penrose (Forza Horizon Series, Fable reboot) and Visual Design Director Elly Marshall (Forza Horizon 3, Just Cause 3, DIRT).
This all seems at a pretty early stage still for now, so we wouldn't expect any concrete information on the game for a good while yet. Still, it's good to see a publishing deal being struck here - which hopefully means that Maverick Games' first project is well on its way to becoming a reality.