Forza Horizon 5 Should Hit PlayStation

Put simply, there’s nothing on PlayStation 5 quite like Forza Horizon 5.

The Crew Motorfest? Close. Leaning hard into the philosophy of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’, its fully fledged festival approach certainly makes Motorfest more akin to the Forza Horizon series than either of its predecessors.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown? Sadly, no. While the Forza Horizon series may owe a significant debt to the trendsetting MMO racing of the original Test Drive Unlimited, Solar Crown ventured too far with its always-online requirement and lack of a dedicated solo mode. In contrast, the Horizon series has allowed players to seamlessly switch between offline and online play since Forza Horizon 2 in 2014.

Need for Speed Unbound? Well, it does offer an impressive customization suite that surpasses Horizon in several areas. However, its focus on high-speed, arcade-style hot pursuits means it's not a direct comparison.

No, the pound-for-pound champion of modern open-world racing is Forza Horizon 5 – and now it's available on PlayStation 5 for the very first time. Its expansive and stunning Mexico map, its drift-friendly vehicle dynamics, and its massive, 900-car garage that goes far beyond just the essentials, featuring cult favorite cars unavailable in other racing games. PlayStation users are now experiencing all of this, many for the first time.

The reaction has been fun to watch.

This influx of brand new players is something the team has been eagerly anticipating.

"Yeah, I'm super excited," confirms Playground Games art director Don Arceta. "Like, brand new people; for many, this will probably be the first Forza Horizon game they've ever played. So it's super exciting just to think about that, and think about what our first Horizon experiences were."

Arceta is particularly eager to see what kinds of places and races PlayStation 5 players will create using Forza Horizon 5's extensive set of customization tools – the Event Lab.

"You'll actually get some pretty good Halo content too on the PlayStation, with the event lab props!" he adds. "We have over 800 props now in the Event Lab, and just seeing what the community's done with that feature and mode – and the creativity of the community – it's just mind-blowing. I'm super excited, once we get into the PlayStation 5 users, about what they'll build, and the creativity that will come from that community."

"As you can imagine, because the series has been based around the Xbox environment and architecture, there's a lot of code and engineering that's worked with that," says Arceta. "So when we brought it to the PS5, it was no small undertaking. It was quite a huge task."

"The PlayStation 5 version was developed by Panic Button, in collaboration with Turn 10 and ourselves, but Panic Button did an amazing job. So you get that amazing, quality experience that you get on Xbox and PC – now you get on the PlayStation, and it's just amazing work that Panic Button has done."

Personally, I’ve never been able to look past the Forza series as a whole as home to the biggest and best collection of Hot Wheels on the block. No other racing series contains such a variety of weird and wonderful cars that I want, alongside a cavalcade of cars I didn’t even know I wanted. As a car fan, I love the idea of a whole new cohort of players potentially discovering their favorite cars in Forza Horizon 5 – cars their other racing games just haven’t been serving them.

For Playground Games lead game designer David Orton, however, it's the sheer breadth of Forza Horizon 5 that he anticipates will impress new players.

"The breadth of Horizon is quite staggering," says Orton. "I think what we find is players go in and find what they really enjoy but, because there's so much freedom, that can really be whatever you want it to be."

"Horizon is the space where really everyone is welcome, and there's something in it for everyone," he continues. "We always pride ourselves on giving the player that kind of agency and freedom to do whatever they want, and the game will reward them and react in that way. I'm really looking forward to players just discovering the breadth of the content. If you just want to do road racing, or if you're really into Rivals and track racing, you can totally do that. But if you love taking incredible photos, you can totally do that. If you're into Event Lab, and you want to create content for other people, you can totally do that. Horizon is the space where really everyone is welcome, and there's something in it for everyone. I think the feeling of people going in and realizing this is more than just a racing game is what's really exciting for me."

"That, for me, is a victory, because once they're surprised, they're engaged – and they want to learn more. So I'm really looking for that. The delight from players; just hearing their surprise and hearing their stories."

Here, Orton is in agreement.

"Yeah, I think it's that," he adds. "Players who've never tried Horizon before – whether that's because it's on a different platform, or they've just never had the time to do it – to actually jump into this world and realize that it's actually a really warm, welcoming place that's full of fun, and finding a home at Horizon."

"Players who've never played before realizing that, 'Oh my goodness, how have I never played this game before? This is incredible.' That, to me, is a win. We're about to target a cohort of players who may have never played a Forza title before. There's a bit of an unknown to how people react to that, but I think when you look at the history of our titles, we're continually perfecting our craft. We feel so excited to bring this to PlayStation. I think we're going to bring in a whole load of new players and that's really exciting."

If there's any hobby that's more tribal than car culture, it's those who hinge their identities on their video game console of choice. For racing game fans, however, one big wall has come down.

Let's hope it's not the last.