EA Blocks Porsche from Forza 4

FORZA Y U NO HAVE PORSCHES?


Porsche cars will not appear in Forza 4, following Electronic Arts' decision to block any deal between the German car's agents and Microsoft.

EA owns the rights to videogame depictions of Porsche cars. In the past, the company has negotiated deals that allowed the cars to appear in games from rival publishers, such as Forza 3.

EA's focus on its Shift driving series and Need for Speed has likely persuaded bosses to keep other games away from the popular Porsche autos.

At the Forza blog, Dan Greenawalt, creative director at the game's developer Turn 10, fumed, "This kills me...Since the beginning of the Forza franchise, the Porsche license has been available only through a sub-licensing deal with EA. 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.

He added, "In our business, we stay friendly with all of the manufacturers and licensors necessary to deliver players rich and innovative automotive experiences. As you'd expect, this includes quite a few key people in Porsche circles. 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--and, despite the result, we thank them for their efforts.

"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."

Could be that the EA move might lead to more auto franchise blocking wars between publishers of racing games. Greenawalt added, "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."