Playground winds down new content for Forza Horizon 4 as Horizon 5 draws near

Newsbrief: Forza Horizon 5 is right around the corner, but the impending launch of a new game means that developer Playground Games has to make tough decisions about how it'll handle new content and live events in 2018's Forza Horizon 4.

That future of Forza Horizon 4 came up during a monthly update video (spotted by VGC) published this week. While in-game events will still update on a monthly basis, Playground says Horizon 4 players shouldn't expect new cars or features in those updates.

Instead, the game's periodic updates will offer a remix of past content that Playground senior producer Tom Butcher likens to "a mixtape, featuring the return of some of your favorite content combined with recently added new features”. Playground adds that it plans to "make sure Forza Horizon 4 continues to be a fun experience" following the launch of Horizon 5 this November, but that they "aren't ready to share exact plans quite yet."

Despite how prolific the Forza franchise is, Microsoft tends to let older games persist for a while after their sequels steal the spotlight, but not indefinitely so it's likely Horizion 4 will stick around for a few more years. Forza Horizon 3, for example, released in 2016 and stayed up for sale until late 2020, despite Horizon 4 launching in late 2018.