Tomorrow, Forza Horizon 3 will be unleashed upon driving game fans, and early critical response suggests that the latest installment in Microsoft’s flagship motorsport franchise is something of a must-play. However, its release will also herald the impending end of life for the first game in the Horizon subseries.
Developer Turn 10 has announced in a blog post that the original Forza Horizon will reach end of life on October 20. This means that the game and all of its downloadable content will no longer be available for purchase after that date.
For players that already own Forza Horizon, there should be no cause for concern. Any Microsoft account that has previously purchased the game and its DLC will still be able to download that content as normal, even after it is delisted from the Xbox storefront.
However, players who own the base game but haven’t completed their DLC collection should act now if they want to have the full experience available to them later on. While the appeal of individual packs of cars will vary from player to player, the highly praised Rally expansion is well worth picking up.
Forza Horizon launched for the Xbox 360 back in 2012, originally being intended as a more approachable spinoff to the simulation-leaning Forza Motorsport series. The game was made backwards compatible on the Xbox One in August, ahead of its availability as part of the Games with Gold program earlier this month.
No reason has been given for the delisting of Forza Horizon, but it seems likely that its end of life is related to the many licensing agreements necessary to use real-world cars in such a title. These deals inform how long a game can be sold on a digital storefront, because of the fact that auto manufacturers’ intellectual property makes up a huge part of the experience.
