Like Halo before it, Forza Motorsport can’t justify splitscreen at launch

If you were hoping to play some splitscreen co-op in Forza Motorsport, there's some bad news, as it won't be available at launch.

During a recent Forza Monthly Twitch stream over on the game's official channel, creative director Chris Esaki spoke about some of the features that won't be available when the game launches this October. Aside from splitscreen, Esaki also shared the news that spectator mode also won't be available at launch, and some multiplayer modes won't let you race against AI. "Having players come into a featured multiplayer event and taking player slots, and then spectating? It's not really the racing we had intended," said Esaki during the stream. "Similarly, racing with AI in featured multiplayer with all its potential impacts on your safety rating also didn't make a whole lot of sense to have and is not going to be available for us at launch."

Esaki also noted that the absence of splitscreen is due to the game's graphical features and rendering engine. "And since we're on the topic of some legacy features that aren't in at launch, our heavy investment in pushing our new graphical features and our complete overhaul of the rendering engine unfortunately made splitscreen really difficult to implement, and it's also not going to be in for launch."

While this might be exactly what you want to hear, it does sound like there's a possibility for these features to be introduced further down the line.

Forza Motorsport was originally expected to arrive earlier this year, in the spring, but when it was shown off again in June it was confirmed to be receiving an October 10 release date. Another unfortunate thing about the game, though, is that it will be always online, meaning if your internet goes down, you won't be able to play the game's career mode.

Halo Infinite notably omitted splitscreen campaign co-op at launch, but further down the line cancelled the feature. It's not clear if Forza Motorsport faces the same fate, but for now it just seems like it won't be there at launch.