Don’t Pre-Order Forza Horizon 5 On PS5

Forza Horizon 5 first arrived on Xbox and PC back in 2021, and in the years since, it has received a number of updates and expansions to make it into one of the most impressive racing titles of the generation. Now, as part of a new multiplatform strategy by Microsoft, it’s launching on PS5 in April with all of its additional content included, along with Pro support and a few other bells and whistles.

As incredible as Playground Games’ open world racer is, it’s still several years old and has been available on Xbox Game Pass the entire time. If you aren’t a member of the subscription service, you can also pick up physical and digital copies for cheap if you look around hard enough. But now the PS5 version is on the horizon (sorry), Microsoft is looking to make as much money as possible with three editions, each with different amounts of stuff.

There Is No Reason To Pre-Order Forza Horizon 5 On PS5

If you pick up the standard edition, it will run you £54.99 ($59.99) while the deluxe edition with a Car Pass increases the cost to £69.99 ($74.99). But the edition I really want to talk about, and the one that represents one of the very worst parts of modern gaming, is the premium edition. You will need to fork out £84.99 ($89.99) for this version of the game, which features all the DLC that I mentioned earlier alongside a Forza Horizon 5 VIP membership and five days early access to the game itself. For a game that already came out several years ago.

For regular customers who don’t fancy paying extra for the privilege, Forza Horizon 5 launches for PS5 on April 29, but those who pick up the premium edition can play it from April 24. Alternatively, they could boot it up on Game Pass on a multitude of devices for a small fraction of the cost. It’s a no-brainer unless you are utterly brain-rotted by Trophies or want to see exactly how the PS5 version measures up to what came before. It makes little sense, and yet I know some people are going to perceive it as a good deal and fall for this trick.

But People Are Going To Do It Anyway

Microsoft isn’t the first major company to pull off this pre-order tactic, and it won’t be the last. I will never forget when Square Enix introduced an ‘Augment Your Pre-order’ campaign ahead of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a scheme that was intended to offer people more content as pre-order numbers climbed ever higher. It began with pieces of downloadable content before unlocking digital art books, in-game missions, and culminated in pushing forward the release date by four whole days.

It was transparently corporate and reeked of Square Enix holding back in-game content that was already in development purely to boost sales numbers. Doing this behind the scenes is to be expected, but turning that act into a public marketing scheme couldn’t have been more foolish. Gamers immediately tore it to pieces, so much so that Square Enix would soon fold and make all the content previously locked behind this scheme available to everyone. We even saw the release date move forward, meaning these weren’t rewards being earned, but thin excuses for marketing.

In the years since, we have rarely seen something as transparent as this, but publishers have still managed to normalise the concept of early access and tricking consumers into spending almost double to play games earlier than others.

Recently, we have seen early access incentives in Star Wars Outlaws, Avowed, Battlefield 2042, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Starfield, and many others. It has become commonplace, an overpriced early admission disguised as a super-cool bonus. This is the date when review embargoes tend to lift for games too, only further cementing the fact that it is a marketing tactic to sell more copies at far higher prices rather than a legitimate bonus that benefits the end user.

The thing is, I can understand the existence of such a pre-order bonus when it comes to new games. I understand how if you were a Star Wars superfan you might cough up enough dough to play Outlaws before anyone else. But Forza Horizon 5 came out years ago. We know it’s amazing, and we know there are multiple places to play it already, but Microsoft is still charging people close to £100 and acting like we’re fools by not jumping at the chance.

So, do yourself a favour, and please don’t pre-order Forza Horizon 5 on PS5. I promise you it isn’t worth the asking price.

Systems

Released

November 9, 2021

ESRB

E for Everyone