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Forza Horizon developer might get absorbed by Microsoft

Signs point to Microsoft gearing up to acquire Playground Games, the developer behind the massively successful Forza Horizon series.

Published

4 years ago

5th June 2018

Josh Wise

Signs point to Microsoft gearing up to acquire Playground Games, the developer behind the massively successful Forza Horizon series.

An update to the studio’s Companies House page (as spotted by Wccftech), which was made on May 29^th, lists Keith Dolliver as a new director at Playground Games.

Dolliver is vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft, and, according to his LinkedIn profile, specialises in mergers and acquisitions.

Microsoft has appointed Dolliver as a director at a number of studios that it has acquired: Rare, Lionhead, and Skype.

The acquisition does make sense for Microsoft, given that the company is renewing its focus on first-party games. Playground’s biggest success is the Forza series, which is one of the few gems Microsoft’s gaming crown.

There have also been rumours of a new Fable game being in development at Playground Games as well, a series that’s always been Microsoft exclusive.

We will likely hear more at E3 next week, if not about Fable then about the next Forza game. Could Xbox be gearing up for something special?

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Josh Wise

Josh is a freelance writer. You’ll find him banging on about the vertices between games and film and music and poetry and books, but don’t let that put you off. He likes games. He likes writing. He also gets the biscuits in.