In June we learnt that Forza Horizon 4 was the latest game to suffer from delisting due to licenses expiring (happening December 15th 2024). This is nothing new for racing games, with Forza Horizon 3 delisted in 2020, and The Crew suffering the same fate earlier this year. However, Microsoft have the opportunity to get the game in as many people’s hands as possible, but are clearly prioritising profits over preservation in this instance.
Simply put, Microsoft are not discounting Forza Horizon 4 as far as they could. We saw Ubisoft offer an incredible 98% discount off The Crew 2, despite that game not currently even being confirmed for delisting. It’s something we can expect for the game in the near future, but such a generous offer saw people even who have no intention of ever playing it snapping it up (for just £1). It drove (heh heh) incredible sales, and the sceptic in me thinks Microsoft decided to try to find a middle ground that resulted in good volume but also very healthy revenue.
Ubisoft aren’t exactly paragons of game preservation themselves, of course, with The Crew (the original game) suffering the ignominy of not merely being delisted from sale, but also being rendered completely unplayable – a clearly unacceptable turn of events rightly highlighted by the Stop Killing Games project. The publisher has since confirmed that The Crew 2 and The Crew: Motorfest will eventually receive offline modes, probably due to the pressure of said project. With Microsoft’s cloud push in full swing, at some point we will no doubt see the two recent Flight Simulator games equally unplayable when support for those ends.
Forza Horizon 4 has been (and is currently as of November 29th) discounted to £10.99 for the Standard Edition, £13.99 for the Deluxe Edition and £16.99 for the Ultimate Edition on the official Xbox store, thanks to the Xbox Black Friday sale. Curiously, as soon as the announcement of delisting was made, all DLC was taken off sale. Why? Well Microsoft generously introduced a system whereby if you already owned DLC for your Game Pass version of Forza Horizon 4, they would essentially gift you the full game for eternity – something I’m assuming they didn’t want people buying lower price DLC to take advantage of.
For me, if you have pride in your game and want as many people as possible to play it, the discounts on Forza Horizon 4 should be as deep as possible. It’s all well and good to say it’s 80% off, but the RRP of £55 is ludicrous (Forza Horizon 5 has the same base price). Sell it for £5 or less, get people on board and allow as many people to enjoy your game as possible for the future.
With Forza Horizon 5 still riding high in the Xbox Most Played charts, there’s probably even a small part of Microsoft that doesn’t want those numbers being cannibalised by a resurgent FH4. In fact, FH4 has risen to #23 in the chart, above the likes of Sea of Thieves, Halo Infinite and Starfield. And on Steam, more people are playing Forza Horizon 4 than 5 (26k vs 19k in the last 24 hours) – which begs the question….would it have been worth just renewing the licences?
If you do want to pick it up, CD Keys are selling the base game for £5.99 at time of writing here (this isn’t an affiliate link…just buy it), though it’s hard to resist the urge to get the Ultimate Edition to include some of the excellent DLC, such as the LEGO expansion. That’s available for £10.99 at CD Keys here, still nicely cheaper than Microsoft’s £16.99 price point. Let us know your thoughts on this and if you’ve decided to get yourself a copy.
This isn’t Microsoft’s fault though… It’s the record label’s that own the music used in the game’s soundtracks fault.
They REFUSE to grant permanent access licenses to game developers, instead only selling limited time licenses. This means any game that uses licensed music like basically ANY/ALL RACING GAMES will inevitably have to be pulled from sale once these licensing agreements end.
That said! Microsoft COULD pull out all the game’s licensed music to make it legal to keep selling, but then they open themselves up to legal problems with existing owners who suddenly can’t play the game they originally payed for (aka w/ licensed music intact).
Yeah agreed, I’d like at least one publisher to implement a solution to this at some point in one of their games. My main issue is they could make it really really cheap so that at least as many people as possible can have a copy of it on their console. But £17 isn’t cheap enough for a game that’s disappearing from the store in a couple of weeks. 100% though the preferred option would be to keep it alive. So many people still love it.
Yup. I would like to see a system where based on one’s purchase date you either get access to the licensed music (if you bought BEFORE said licenses expired) or you don’t (if you didn’t; although this would need to be CLEARLY COMMUNICATED to potential customers on the game’s purchase page); rather than the game just getting pulled off of Steam/Xbox Store/PSN Store entirely once said music license expires. 🤷
But as of yet no major digital game distribution platform supports such a thing. Which is why I really don’t think you can blame Microsoft here with being “anti-game preservation”. This is how digital distribution of racing games has sadly worked since digital game distribution first went mainstream in the mid-late 2000’s w/ Steam, Xbox Live, & PSN… (Aka every single major racing game gets pulled from sale ≈5-10 years after launch, license length depending.)
Aka, Microsoft would have needed to make first of their kind in the entire industry major changes to how the Xbox Store works to support my desired end-point for racing games w/ licensed music in the digital distribution era.
Sure, I would hope that they more than anyone else with their generations old commitment to backwards compatibility & keeping their old games available for sale would be able to see that potential and make those changes, but I can’t really blame them anymore than any other major player when they just stick to the status quo on this subject. 🤷
Its not just the music. Isn’t it just about EVERY brand name in the game, including the cars themselves?
I will defend Microsoft on this one, I did buy a physical copy when it was released and with that bought the map add ons when they were released. When it was announced that Horizon 4 would be taken offline. Microsoft gave me a digital copy code of the game for free. That doesn’t sound like a company trying to claw as much revenue as possible?! The difference between Horizon 3 and 4 and the crew is that you can still play the horizon titles, the crew was written off completely, made unplayable with no interest in making an offline version…
First off, Microsoft has ZERO CONTROL over the expiration dates of these expensive music licenses. Second, Forza Horizon 4 is GOATED, it’s probably the Franchise’s best effort by a long mile, you expect Xbox to give away one of its GREATEST GAMES for like $2.99?
Be for real bruv.
Zero control? That simply can’t be true. How come we can still play GTA which has equally impressive music licensing? The cars I can understand.
And if they truly cared about game preservation they would have gone for a lower price, that’s all I’m saying. I get why they didn’t, it’s a fantastic game and they want as much money as possible for it. But don’t talk about being game preservation champions and then prioritise revenue over getting as many copies of the game out there.
Its about to be taken off sale forever. It doesn’t matter if they charge $0.50 for it, they will be making nothing off it from next month on ever again.
Wouldn’t it be crazy when Forza Horizon 5 comes to PS5 that it gets a 4 years license life span too, yet the Xbox versions still get pulled in late 2025/2026 or whenever its due to die?
Wouldn’t surprise me at all!
It’s not unreasonable for consumers to expect access to something at an accessible price in the face of imminent de-listing.
Not only this, nobody talks about series x and physical games.
Last year, Starfield and Forza 8 launched on Xbox. BOTH games came in at launch over 100gbs in size. Xbox series x only uses bluray discs that are single layer 50gb in size. These games came on a single disc. A download from Xbox’s servers, is needed to play these games and its impossible without it. Its not even on the front of the case, its in small text on the back of the game case.
And then slimy Phil and Sarah talk during the Xbox “business update” last Feb saying how they are committed to game preservation? Lies.
And don’t say its the same on PlayStation, this year, GOTY contender, FFVII Rebirth can ONE HUNDRED PERCENT be installed on an offline PS5 console. The game is 140gbs and came on two 100gb bluray discs. Even recently Black Myth Wukong was just over 100gbs when it launched. With the patches since launch, they managed to get the game under 100gbs for the recent physical release.
Its very likely Xbox won’t ever get a physical version of Wukong because
1 There are only 8 million series x consoles sold in 4 years
2 The game will be way over 100gbs on Xbox because of no kraken compression
3 The game will not fit on a 50gb bluray and it isn’t feasible for them to bother with a three multi-disc release because of step 1.
Go to the website DoesItPlay and they will give you all the details and updates on game’s physical releases and if its all there on a disc, and if it isn’t and how pointless that release is then. Just recently Stalker 2 is 150gbs on Xbox and still came on a 50gb bluray disc lol. And again, don’t bring up PS, I just gave an example of literally the biggest game this year and how it runs offline on PS.
NOBODY is talking about physical releases and Xbox. Why not?
I hate the mandatory download stuff even if you buy on disc. Ridiculous.
Also that’s a great website, thanks for the tip. Will be supporting that in the future.
No prob. I know I only posted this 4 hours ago…… but I JUST learned now that Xbox has announced there will be no physical version of Avowed, which supports my theory above about physical games going forward on Xbox being utterly pointless.