Forza Horizon 5 Is The Latest Xbox Game To Make The Leap To PS5
Start your engines.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer recently confirmed that Xbox will be releasing more of its previously exclusive games to PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, and that promise is being kept sooner than expected. Forza Horizon 5, Xbox’s flagship racing title, is officially coming to PlayStation 5.
Developer Playground Games announced the surprising move on January 30, just as a listing for Forza Horizon 5 appeared on the PSN store. No release date has been announced yet for the PS5 version of Forza Horizon 5, but Playground Games says it’s coming this spring and it can be added to wishlists now on PSN.
The PS5 version will be developed by Panic Button along with Playground Games and Forza Horizon creator Turn 10 Studios. Panic Button has previously worked on games including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Doom Eternal, and Forza Horizon 4. According to Playground Games, the PS5 version will be identical to the existing Xbox release, and the game’s DLC will also be available on PlayStation at launch. Cross-play is being extended to the PS5 version of the game, so new players will also be able to match up with those on the existing Xbox and PC releases.
Along with its PlayStation port, Forza Horizon 5 is also due to get a new content update called Horizon Realms. The update will include a collection of the game’s previous Evolving Worlds content, a series of seasonal objectives found throughout the game’s open world for players to complete.
Forza Horizon 5 joins former Xbox exclusives like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Hi-Fi Rush, and Sea of Thieves, which made the jump to PS4 earlier. Seeing Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 is a further confirmation that Xbox truly doesn’t see any of its exclusive games as off limits for porting potential.
“There’s no reason for me to put a ring fence around any game and say this game will not go to a place where it would find players, where it would have business success for us,” Spencer recently told journalist Destin Legarie.
While Forza Horizon 5 may not be as synonymous with Xbox as a game like Halo or Gears (both of which have been rumored to have PS5 ports on the way), the open-world racing game was one of the biggest releases for the first year of Xbox Series X/S. Xbox and Playground Games touted everything from Forza Horizon 5’s graphics and sprawling open world to its physics and sound design as showcases for the power of the newly released consoles. Seeing the game now coming to PS5 is a clear illustration that Xbox is undergoing a major strategy shift to bring its games to as many platforms as possible.
The more arcade-style racing is also a counterpoint to PS5’s own premiere racing series, Gran Turismo. Forza Horizon 5 is relatively easy to jump into even for players who are turned off by the more hardcore simulation approach of Gran Turismo and even attracted plenty of players who don’t typically consider themselves fans of racing games. Bringing Forza Horizon 5 to PS5 could prove to be a big deal for Xbox, as a whole new group of players could revitalize the three-year-old game.
Xbox has discussed its plans to bring games not only to PS5, but also to Nintendo consoles, presumably the Switch 2. Leaker eXtas1s, who previously revealed Forza Horizon 5’s PS5 port, also claims that the game is headed to Switch 2. That would certainly be a bigger leap than the PS5 port and so far the rumor is unsubstantiated. If such a thing did happen, it would almost certainly rely on cloud streaming, like the Switch’s poorly performing Resident Evil 2 port. Whatever happens with Forza Horizon 5, it’s clear now that we should expect a lot more Xbox ports to both PS5 and Switch 2 in the near future, and even Xbox’s biggest games aren’t off limits.