Turn 10 Merges Into Playground Games as Dan Greenawalt Retires

Dan Greenawalt, the director and founder of Forza racing studio Turn 10 Games, has left Microsoft after 27 years with the company.

The departure comes as Microsoft folds Turn 10 into Playground Games, another studio in its Xbox group. The move is part of a wider restructuring of Xbox. Microsoft first announced the combination in an Xbox Wire post titled "Continuing Our Reset", dated 22 September 2026. Xbox Wire is the company's official news blog for its Xbox business.

Greenawalt was director, founder and vice president at Turn 10. Eurogamer, citing a report by The Verge, says Playground Games studio head Trevor Williams wrote in an internal memo that Greenawalt decided it was the right time to retire from Microsoft.

What happens to the people doing the work is the part most players will want to know. Following the merger, developers from Playground and Turn 10 will work together on the Forza and Fable franchises. A franchise is a series of connected games that share characters, worlds or a name. Forza is the racing series that Turn 10 has long worked on. Fable is a fantasy role-playing series associated with Playground.

The two studios were already working side by side on at least one project. Xbox has said Playground and Turn 10 are working together to bring Forza Horizon 6 to PlayStation 5 after its launch on Xbox and PC. That plan predates the merger announcement.

Playground has its own history with Microsoft. The studio joined Microsoft Studios at the E3 2018 show, with the announcement made on 10 June 2018. That was eight years before the company decided to combine the studio with Turn 10.

For players, the immediate picture is simple. One of the best-known figures behind Forza's studio has retired, and two Xbox teams are being brought under one roof. Forza and Fable will now be developed with input from both sides.