Playground Games has confirmed that Forza Horizon 4 will be delisted from sale late this year on 15th December 2024, thanks to those pesky “licensing and agreements with our partners”. Between now and then, the game will be going on a steep discount, with the possibility to grab a game token for Xbox Game Pass players who bought any kind of DLC for the game.
This discounted pricing hasn’t been announced or put into place on Xbox yet, but Forza Horizon 4 is 80% off on Steam at £10.99, while the Ultimate Edition with DLC is now £16.99. All standalone DLC has already been delisted, so the only way to get the Fortune Island and LEGO Speed Champions DLC packs are to buy the Ultimate Edition.
Xbox Game Pass players who purchased DLC content and who had an active subscription yesterday, 25th June 2024, will receive a game token through the Xbox Message Center that will be delivered in the coming days to turn it into a full digital license for the game.
With the game being delisted, the next Festival Playlist will be its last. Series 77 will run from 25th July through to 22nd August, with the usual smorgasbord of weekly challenges and activities to take part in. After that point the festival playlist history will stay in the game, but players will be skipped through to the Festival Site screen instead of to the Playlist. There will also still be daily and weekly challenges in the game.
This final Series will be the last chance to earn the following Achievements:
- A Creature of Habit – Complete all Seasonal Championships in a Festival Playlist Series.
- Stunt Puller – Complete all Seasonal PR Stunts in a Festival Playlist Series.
- Cashing In – Earn 1 Season Completion Bonus.
- Perfectionist – Earn all 8 Season Completion Bonuses in the same Series.
- Encore? – Complete all activities in a single Festival Playlist Series.
Forza games being delisted used to be a yearly occurrence in the late 2010s, as licensing for music and/or cars expired on a game-by-game basis. However, there’s been a lull since Forza Motorsport 7’s delisting in 2021, and Forza Horizon 4 stayed relevant at the start of the Xbox Series X|S generation thanks to a native port to the new generation, before Forza Horizon 5 arrived two years later. As game releases have spread out, it’s possible that Microsoft has signed longer licensing deals, so that the 2018 game will have had a healthy six years on sale, as opposed to Horizon 3’s four. Additionally, the latest Forza Motorsport is set to be a longer-lasting racing platform, so licensing deals will have been made to take that intention into account.
Of course, Forza Horizon 4 will still be totally playable after it’s been delisted, and it remains a real highlight of the series to date. Launching in 2018 for Xbox One and Xbox One X, it was a fantastic visual showcase that toured a rendition of Northern England and Scotland. In our review, Dom said, “The opening alone, which takes you through Forza’s beautiful changing of the seasons, forced me to quite unknowingly smile like a buffoon a number of times despite my default malaise of British apathy, and the game continued to force this cheery outpouring from me for hours upon hours. So, it’s good. Unless you don’t like smiling. Horizon 4 is fuelled by the same anarchic arcade racing streak as previous entries in the series, but its new additions ensure it remains firmly at the head of the pack.”
Source: Forza.net
