It is the spiritual successor to Bizarre Creations' previous game Metropolis Street Racer, released by Sega for the Dreamcast in 2000.

The cover of each game in the Project Gotham Racing franchise has featured a Ferrari car on it, going from the F50 (PGR) to the Enzo (PGR2), the F430 (PGR3), and the 599 GTB Fiorano (PGR4).

The final main title, Project Gotham Racing 4, was released around the time Bizarre Creations was acquired by Activision.

Following this acquisition, in September 2007, Bizarre Creations announced that PGR4 would be the last game produced for Microsoft,[5] effectively leading to Forza Motorsport replacing it as Xbox's flagship racing franchise.

The developers of Forza Horizon originally intended to reboot the franchise;[7] however, for unknown reasons, this proposal was reportedly turned down by Microsoft.