Of course not, but I think the concept of a live service is a good idea that has yet to have been executed in satisfying manor by anyone.
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So from a company that understands the difference between drifting and power sliding why do we group awd with rwd in drift events makes no sense
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The main reason why I believe that Microsoft doesn’t really have that much of an influence on the development of Forza Horizon is because Horizon lacks DLC. I know it sounds weird at first, but let me explain:
Microsoft has to be fully aware of how expensive a live service concept this is for a racing game like Forza Horizon, due to the licences for the cars. Both Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Horizon 5 barely featured any DLC that were not part of the Ultimate/Premium-Edition, with none for Horizon 5 so far and only 1 car pack for Horizon 4. If Microsoft really had any say in how PG structures the support for the Horizon games, we would surely get a paid car pack every couple of months as that would generate money by using the content that would otherwise be part of the game for free via the Festival-Playlist.
This leads me to believe that this entire concept is PG’s idea, and Microsoft only gives them money. Now, let me emphasize that a live service concept is not a bad idea at all, it just needs to be done right, which Horizon 5 sadly fails at right now by mostly bringing back content from the previous game.
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I’m not going to defend the state of the game here, but I’m sure the main reason it’s the way it is will be down to Microsoft. They ultimately will be the ones putting the squeeze on PG in all areas, including timescales, profit (maximised by limiting headcount, resources, etc) and their own resource availability for online play, leaderboards, etc. I’m sure PG would, given the opportunity, have more people developing gameplay and content, more people fixing bugs, more people in QA, etc but their parent company restricts that. Ultimately this lackluster, bug-ridden game is good for the shareholders.
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Question: Why did it work for Horizon 4 then?
You’re speaking as if Horizon 5 fails because Microsoft tells Playground Games what to do, yet Horizon 4 had the exact same concept that Horizon 5 currently has. Yet, Horizon 4 was not nearly as filled with bugs as Horizon 5 is, online was not nearly as broken, the content that got added was not just from Horizon 3 etc [the list could go on]. And that is even with Horizon 5 having a whole year more of development.
Horizon 5 is the first game not developed under Ralph Fulton as Creative Director. That is a more plausible explanation at why Horizon 5 fails where Horizon 4 succeeded than just pushing the blame towards Microsoft when there is no reason to believe anything changed in that regard from Horizon 4 to Horizon 5.
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You do realise your wrong.
There was 12 car packs that were separate to buy they did have the option for the car pass that eventually dropped in price so made individual price purchase not viable
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That is incorrect, read what I wrote.
What I said was that there was only one Car Pack in Horizon 4 that was not part of the Ultimate Edition, that one being the Hot Wheels Car Pack. This is factually correct as all the other ones are part of the Ultimate Edition, which is exactly what I have said.
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Hot wheels carpark came as a part of the ultimate edition as the second expansion.
I’ve purchased every ultimate/premium edition forza so haven’t had to purchase anything for last few games.
Other friends (with brains) have purchased only the packs they liked
Once again, this is incorrect. Please inform yourself before you try to tell me I’m wrong:
“It is not included in any bundles or special edition releases, and must be purchased separately.”
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My bad yeah Hotwheels expansion was fh3. I didn’t realise hotwheels legends carpark was a thing. might be because I’m in the minority that hated all children toys expansions. My bad. I’ll leave my comments on here to show I’m an idiot and your right 
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But in all fairness the comment of them not making money from separate car packs isn’t right because not everyone bought the ultimate/premium pack and would have had to pay separately every month or pay a one off fee (car pass) and the ones who did get ultimate/premium were basically paying preorder for car packs (and also expansions) even if we didn’t like the packs, so either way they were making money from car packs.
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All games rip us off one way or the other and premium editions are the worst because we’re willing to pay upfront and might get nothing we want at all and be given things we wouldn’t pay for otherwise just for the sake of FOMO and the promise of saving a few quid
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Here is a conspiracy theory:
Microsoft pushed PGG to release FH5 before it was ready. They needed “fodder” for the Game Pass and PGG had to deliver. They arranged for all those great 10/10 reviews and GOTY nominations. That the game was extremely buggy was neglected, and they hoped that casual gamers and reviewers will not realize the full extent. Moreover, Microsoft has PGG extremely understaffed. They barely have any time to fix the bugs and are in over their heads with the work on the 2 expansions. They have no help from Turn 10 and produce more and more bugs because they do not fully understand the game engine and code.
If all this is not Microsoft’s fault, PGG itself and the management under Mike Brown are to blame. And that worries me (and apparently many others) even more… To an extent where the whole future of Forza Horizon is in question.
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Here’s another conspiracy theory PhantomiumX is right
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Is it time for Mike Brown to go ?
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So the current monthly rivals leaderboard seems to be clean and fully legit or mostly legit, so I really don’t understand why they can’t take the time to clean up all the boards, PR stunts and any more rivals that may have cheated times. Little things like this would give their player base more motivation to play more and get better times/ranks if they knew it was legit, wouldn’t it? Seems like very basic logic to me so I don’t understand the reluctance to remove impossible scores and times, especially PR stunts since they’re popular with newer and vet players.
Solve it all by scrapping both horizon and motorsport and combining it as a forza life. That way both teams would be involved in the one game. One side falls so does the other so it’ll make turn10 pull there fingers out of there erm…. Pockets.
Easily done you start in horizon and just have an airport on the map which takes you to the racing career(motorsport) and doubles as a runway for drag racing on the horizon side
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This does not really make sense. Forza Horizon is the strongest franchise Microsoft has to offer, and they even allowed Turn10 with Forza Motorsport after three mediocre games to develop a new one, and take all the time they need.
2021 already had Halo Infinite [another game where the developers seemingly wer allowed to take all the time they needed] releasing before the holiday season, as well as AoE 4. There is no reason to believe that Microsoft pressured Playground Games into releasing Horizon 5 early as it would have been a successful holiday season for Microsoft anyways.
As you’ve mentioned, Horizon 5 is the first Horizon game developed with Mike Brown as creative director rather than Ralph Fulton, who had that role from Horizon 1 to Horizon 4. A more plausible theory is that Brown had a vision for the game, wanted to make it the biggest Horizon so far in all aspects [Expanding Horizon Life, create a bigger open world etc.], but it was just too much. We even know that Horizon 4 did not feature a bigger map than Horizon 3 because it was said that the game engine could not handle a bigger map, thus making it reasonable to think that the dicision to make the map of Horizon 5 even bigger alone could be responsible for some of the games’ flaws.
Sounds simple, but considering that Horizon 4 and 5 are at the core very similar games and somehow Horizon 4 turned out to be not nearly as riddled with bugs as Horizon 5 was, it’s much more plausible than believing that somehow now after 4 great games this is all Microsofts’ fault.
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That’s great news! There have been reports that the most popular cheat engine does not work anymore. Apparently, PGG have finally found a way to deal with that. They implemented it silently to avoid talking about cheaters at all…
I play the Eliminator every night for 1-2 h and also did not encounter any cheater since the last update…
Well, it was just a conspiracy theory… If the Forza franchise is really that important to Microsoft as you say, I wonder what they are thinking at the moment… If they are aware and dissatisfied, things might eventually go the right way. And responsible parties get identified…
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