Forza Horizon 5 is thriving more than ever, nearly three years after launch, with nearly 17,000 concurrent daily players. Its twin, Forza Motorsport, is just barely breaking the 500-player mark on Steam. User review scores couldn’t be further off either. FH5 is enjoying a sweet 88% Very Positive rating from over 175,000 players, while Motorsport is barely sitting at 41% Mixed from 7,300 people. With that in mind, developers Turn 10 haven’t given up on Forza Motorsport just yet, and have provided detailed plans for the coming months.
The first essential feature is Forza Insider. Passionate players from the community can join the special program and help developers better understand what they feel the game is lacking, where it excels, and so on. One of the benefits includes the ability to try out early update playtests and offer feedback. Forza Insider is platform-agnostic, so you can choose the gaming platform you prefer when you sign up.
While early access to the update may sound great to fans, getting in isn’t easy. The criteria depend on the player’s region, platform, and other unspecified details decided by the team. The latter most likely involves the length of your personal playtime, how often you play, your game stats, how good you are at F. Motorsport, etc. The playtest doesn’t have a release date yet, but you can sign up on the official website.
Those who join and share feedback via polls or forum threads will be rewarded with free FM credits in the game. In other words, people will actually be working for digital pay, which is a bit disconcerting if you think about it philosophically.
Photo: Xbox
Renewed Car Rewards
Turn 10 has announced upcoming features and modes, including Spectator and Drift modes, a Creative Hub and code sharing feature, free play weather options, and two new tracks.
The team listened to their audience and it seems they heard some of their wants and desires loud and clear. For example, some players don't even care about the single-player mode and love nothing more than unlocking cars by progressing in online multiplayer.
So starting with the next major update, reward cars can also be earned in Featured Multiplayer by playing a certain amount of races. It's so weird that it took over 10 months to implement this feature.
Refusing to give the player a choice of progression during early development when thinking about the game design could indicate that something was wrong during the pre-production stages. Fortunately, Update 12 will arrive in mid-September and will address this missing feature.
Additionally, completing arbitrary objectives in a Challenge Hub spanning Career, Featured Multiplayer, and Rivals will net you credits, cars, race suits, and other fun stuff. Previous Featured Tours will be returning later this year, so you can unlock past reward cars from those events if you missed them.
Two more tracks are set to make their dazzling appearance. Update 13 in mid-October brings back Forza Motorsport 4’s classic Sunset Peninsula with five layouts. Update 15 in December will introduce Bathurst and a Featured Tour celebrating Australian cars and motorsports.
Photo: Xbox
Peeping Tom
The long-awaited reworked Spectator mode is in its final stages and will be included in Private Multiplayer during the major September update.
It works like a live replay, with fan-requested features such as a dynamic full-field driver list and lap counter, a ticker with leader times, race intervals, position changes, penalty times or pit stops.
Also available are a track map, driver data, real race start/finish from 3-2-1 to podium, default spectator camera, new Rail Cam and Point of Interest camera options, an improved control panel, a customizable HUD, minimal switching delay and the ability to save the replay after watching it.
This latest Save Replay feature has an unfortunate twist, though. The limit on how long a replay save can be hasn't changed, and varies depending on factors like the number of cars or the length of a race.
Adrift
Unleash your Tokyo Drift skills in Forza Motorsport with the all-new Drift mode coming to Free Play and Private Multiplayer. A curated selection of Formula Drift cars are hitting the showroom floor, but there’s no timer on the clock just yet. All we know is that it’s coming in the next few months.
So how does it work? Well, the player earns Drift Score points based on speed, angle, and timing. Be careful though, because it can be frustrating when you earn important points only to lose them all due to a crash or failing to chain drifts fast enough.
Drift-specific HUD elements are also coming, which can be enabled in the Gameplay & HUD settings. In addition to the ability to host drop-in and drop-out Drift Meetups in Private Multiplayer, there is also a public Drift Meetup lobby planned that will join Featured Multiplayer at some point, though not at launch.
Photo: Xbox
Community sharing is caring
A beloved feature from Forza Horizon 5 is making a dazzling appearance in Forza Motorsport. The Media tab has been overhauled into a Creative Hub, where players can share their projects, vinyl collections, tunes, photos, and replays.
Share Codes allows code generation for every UGC (User-Generated Content) item in the game. It is retroactive and has new, easier search and sort options.
You're in luck if you're familiar with Forza Horizon 5's Livery Editor. The team is working on an updated version of the current Edit Layer Tool, making the user interface (UI) similar to that of FH5.
Knights of the Storm
The next update also brings new weather customization tools for Free Play and Private Multiplayer. The probability of weather patterns can also be adjusted to make things predictable or surprising, depending on your choice.
You can set the weather types for the start, middle and end of the race and choose between Partly Cloudy, Overcast Clouds, Threatening Clouds, Thunderclouds, Clouds with Lightning, Patchy Fog, Fine Fog, Heavy Fog, Summer Drizzle, Drizzle, Light Rain, Moderate Rain, Heavy Rain, Rain with Thunder and Rain with Lightning.
All this and more, such as a featured Community Choice Multiplayer slot, audio cues for the car's proximity radar, improved machine learning systems or a new advanced ghosting system, will be coming to FM in the coming months.
Photo: Xbox
Not dead yet
While Forza Motorsport has extremely low player counts on Steam and a 41% user review score doesn’t help it succeed, things could be worse for Microsoft’s exclusive racing title. Sony, for example, is projected to lose over $200 million on its latest online hero shooter, Concord. Only 178 players cared enough to fire up the game in the last 24 hours, which is abysmal, to say the least.
Turn 10 has done a good job with constant updates since it came out, and it really does feel like there is something to be salvaged. At least, that's what their constant efforts suggest. Otherwise, why bother spending millions of dollars a month on updates and improvements if no one plays the game?
It could be that the racing title has a potentially loyal and profitable player base, enough to generate some serious cash over time. Or… it could be a rumored Hail Mary pass, as Microsoft could theoretically purchase the entire continent of Africa.
And this is no joke. In 2023, Statista said Africa's GDP was $3.1 trillion, while Bill Gates' company is currently worth $3.07 trillion. They would still have $60 billion, if my math skills were “math” as the young people on TikTok and whatnot say.
Unfortunately for developer Turn 10, it will take another six months or so to see any changes in player behavior.