Toyota Returns to Racing Video Games
If you’re that person who always picks JDM cars in racing video games, you might have noticed that Toyota vehicles were curiously absent from video games launched in 2017 and later save for Gran Turismo Sport.
Even more curious is that Toyota never explained the decision. The closest thing we ever got to an explanation for the automaker’s absence in racing video games was a tweet from Toyota UK that has since been deleted.
“Where is Toyota in the new Need for Speed game? That’s a real missed opportunity,” a user had asked, only to be told the following:
Related: Explore the 2019 Toyota model lineup
Yes, we were also floored. But there’s no way to know whether “illegal street racing” in fictional video game environments was truly the reason Toyota had stopped licensing its vehicles to racing games — and whatever the reason might have been, the company seems to have changed its mind.
The Forza Motorsport account has just announced that the 1998 Toyota Supra RZ will be featured in Forza Horizon 4, and we can only assume that this is the first of many Toyota cars to come in racing video games as the automaker tries to generate interest for the new 2020 GR Supra.
As that twitter user had pointed out, it would be a real missed opportunity by Toyota not to use racing video games like Forza and Need for Speed to promote its new sports car.
Related: Learn more about the return of the Toyota Supra
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