It's been a tough road to travel this year for driving simulations that have just been trying to get off the production line on time. The latest speed-mad game to cool its jets is Microsoft's Forza Motorsport. According to the game's Web page on the Xbox Web site, the "ultra-realistic" racer won't be hitting the streets until April 2005, which is two months later than its previous February 2005 ship date.

　　The change marks the third release date for the internally developed Forza Motorsport. The Xbox-exclusive game was originally supposed to hit shelves in December, just in time for the holiday season, but the release date was pushed back to February. No reason has been given for any of the delays.

　　Two other highly anticipated racers have also gone back to the pits. Sony's Gran Turismo 4, originally slated for a December release in both Japan and North America on the PlayStation 2, is now headed toward an "early 2005" release. Rockstar's Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition was pulled over as well. The street racer was originally slated to ship in Q4 2004, but now the game's looking at a street date of Q1 2005.

　　However, Microsoft did launch the official Forza Motorsport Web site. The site gives an overview of several of the licensed cars in the game, the real and fictitious courses, and several movies and screenshots of the game in action. Forza Motorsport concentrates heavily on building and customizing cars for racing, and the site gives browsers a taste of what's to come in the game with the "carbuilder," a feature that lets users trick out cars with new engines, drive trains, and various other car parts.

　　For more information on Forza Motorsport, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.