Playground Games

Playground Games is based in Leamington Spa, England. It was founded by Gavin Raeburn, Trevor Williams and Ralph Fulton: the studio was announced in November 2009 and opened in early 2010. Its team brought together racing game developers from British companies such as Codemasters, Bizarre Creations, Criterion Games, Black Rock Studio and Sony Liverpool.

Its first project, announced in 2012, was Forza Horizon, a spin-off of the Forza series made with Turn 10 Studios and published by Microsoft for Xbox 360 that October. Forza Horizon 2 (2014) followed on Xbox 360 and Xbox One, then Forza Horizon 3 (2016), which also came to Windows. In 2014 the studio formed a team for mobile games, and in 2017 it announced a second studio to work on an open-world game outside the racing genre.

At E3 2018 Microsoft announced it had acquired Playground, which joined Microsoft Studios, now Xbox Game Studios. At the same time it unveiled Forza Horizon 4, released on 2 October 2018, and revealed that the studio was working on an open-world action role-playing game, later shown to be a new Fable. Forza Horizon 5 (2021), also available on PlayStation 5, and Forza Horizon 6 (2026) came next.

Trevor Williams is now the studio head. In 2024 a third studio opened in Leamington Spa to help with Fable, due in 2027 on Windows, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. In September 2026 Microsoft announced that Playground and Turn 10 Studios would be merged into a single studio working on both Forza and Fable, as part of a restructuring of Xbox Game Studios.