EA blocks Porsche inclusion in Forza 4

Iconic German car brand Porsche will not feature in Microsoft’s Forza 4 following EA’s unwillingness to strike a deal with Microsoft.

EA has for some years owned a sub-licensing deal with Porsche regarding video game rights to the manufacturer. EA and Microsoft successfully negotiated a deal that saw Porsche included in Forza 3, but have failed to reach a similar agreement for the next instalment.

This, no doubt, is to do with EA’s increased interest in the racing genre following the formation of its two IP strategy that has seen the rebirth of Need for Speed and the creation of the Shift series.

This kills me. While Forza Motorsport 4 will feature RUF, it will not include Porsche cars,” Turn 10’s creative director Dan Greenawalt said in an interview on the Forza blog.

In Forza 3, we were able to feature more than 35 different Porsche models by offering to collaborate with EA. For Forza 4, we were looking forward to adding even more Porsche cars. In the end, however, EA couldn’t see their way towards collaborating again.

We’ve asked our contacts at EA to reconsider their position frequently and regularly over the last 18 months. We also reached out to various influential people in gaming to lobby on our behalf, and on your behalf, but that was to no avail.

To make sure we tried everything, we consulted with these advocates and were happy to find they were already aware of the situation and lobbying from within on behalf of Forza 4.

While we respect EA’s need to run their business as they see fit, we’ve regularly collaborated in the past and hope we can find our way back to that approach.

Forza had the exclusive license for all Ferrari cars, for example, on the Xbox and PC platforms. But at the end of the day, we’ve always found that we just weren’t willing to block other racing games from having Ferraris outright, as we believed that this would do nothing but hurt the racing ecosystem.

I’m very sorry for all of this. Fans shouldn’t have to think about any of this – you should just be able to drive Porsches and Ferraris in the games you love. Porsche makes wonderful cars and I’m sorry that we won’t have them in Forza 4.”