Former Forza Horizon Director Launches New Studio with Crime-Racing Game

Mike Brown, the creative director behind Forza Horizon 5, has announced his first independent game: Clutch, an open-world action-driving game set in the French Riviera. His new studio, Maverick Games, is aiming to release the game in spring 2027. The title mixes racing with crime elements — a departure from the festival-racing formula that defined his previous work at Microsoft.

From Forza to Starting Out

Brown worked as a designer on Forza Horizon 4 before taking over as creative director on Horizon 5, where he led the series' move to a Mexican setting and helped integrate it with Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service. Now he is stepping away from a major franchise to explore territory that might not fit within Microsoft's broader portfolio.

This move fits a wider pattern in the industry: senior developers use their experience on established franchises to start independent studios and pursue creative ideas that might not align with a corporation's goals. Brown's decision to blend racing with crime and narrative suggests he wants to build something distinctly different from what Horizon offers.

What Makes Clutch Technically Challenging

Clutch has to handle two very different kinds of gameplay at once: the precise physics of high-speed driving and the character-based movement and actions you'd expect from a crime or action game. The open-world design means smooth transitions between driving fast and getting out of the car to complete missions — a bigger technical puzzle than it might sound.

The French Riviera setting itself brings both advantages and constraints. The mix of coastal highways, city streets, and mountain roads gives the team lots of variety to build into the game, but also requires sophisticated tricks to keep the graphics running smoothly across all that terrain. The choice of location may also matter legally: European settings often allow more freedom with real car brands than American or Japanese locations do.

This is not a new story in games. We saw similar patterns when Infinity Ward founders left to start Respawn, or when veteran designers launched smaller studios after major franchise work. The results have been uneven. Success depends heavily on whether the studio can raise enough money and hang onto creative control while competing against much larger teams.

Who Will Play This, and How It Stacks Up

Spring 2027 puts Clutch up against both well-known racing franchises and newer games built for next-generation consoles. By then, the current PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X hardware will be fully mature, allowing developers to push what those machines can do without the compromise of also building for older systems.

Crime-racing hybrids have not typically been blockbuster hits. Games like the original Driver or Saints Row sold reasonably well but never matched the sales of pure racing games or pure action games. Brown's real challenge is proving that mixing these elements makes the game better, not just more confusing.

Building a Studio in Today's Market

Getting Clutch done by spring 2027 depends entirely on who Brown hires and which external partners he works with. A modern open-world game like this usually needs 200 to 300 people working for 4 to 5 years. Brown has industry connections that should help attract talent, but he is bidding against major studios that are aggressively hiring right now.

Maverick Games will almost certainly license an existing game engine rather than build its own from scratch. Unreal Engine 5 is the likely choice — it is widely used, mature, and well-documented. Unity could be an option, though recent pricing changes have made some independent developers wary.

What This Means for the Broader Industry

The broader context here is important. Microsoft and other platform holders have historically relied on money and IP ownership to keep creative directors in place. But the pull of independence — the chance to make creative decisions without corporate constraints — continues to lure experienced people away from franchise work.

There is also real market appetite for driving games that tell stories and have progression. While pure racing simulation games still have devoted fans, most players seem to want driving experiences that go beyond traditional racing: progression systems, narrative, character development.

Worth flagging: the spring 2027 date assumes everything goes smoothly, but the industry has learned the hard way that this rarely happens. Teams adjust to remote work, technical problems pop up, and games slip. Independent studios, in particular, feel more pressure to hit deadlines because they do not have a corporate safety net. This timeline should be treated as a target, not a guarantee.

The success or failure of Clutch will likely shape how Microsoft approaches keeping senior talent. It may also influence whether Microsoft considers adding more story and crime elements to future Forza Horizon games. For the rest of the industry, Brown's experiment is a test: can a veteran director of a major franchise successfully build a studio and ship an AAA game as an independent, while keeping the same level of quality and scale. We will find out in 2027.