Forza Horizon 5, which launched over four years ago on Xbox and PC, is making the leap to PlayStation 5 soon, but because it’s 2025, the game will lock “early access” to Xbox’s open-world driving sim behind a pricey special edition. It’s the next evolution in publishers holding games hostage for extra money.
Last month, Xbox and Playground Games announced that Forza Horizon 5—which launched exclusively on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC in 2021—was set to be the next big first-party Microsoft game to be ported to PlayStation. Horizon 5 is a very good open-world racing game that will now have a brand new audience of players, and that’s awesome! What isn’t awesome and is in fact shitty, dumb, and greedy is that Xbox is going to charge PS5 players $100 to play the game a few days early, despite Horizon 5 being a game that released back in 2021.
On February 27, Xbox announced that Forza Horizon 5 would launch on PS5 on April 29. But if you spend $100 to buy the fanciest, expensive-st version— the Premium Edition—you can start playing the game on April 25. Xbox claims this is “early access,” but uh, I’ve been playing Forza Horizon 5 on my Xbox Series X for years now.
This is all really silly for a few reasons. First, it lays bare the fact that the early access scams publishers have embraced recently are completely arbitrary and nonsensical. A game that you can play right now on PC and Xbox is going to be released “early” for some players on PS5. Give me a break. Second, when Xbox launched Forza Horizon 5 back in 2021 it did charge $100 for early access, which was still annoying but at least it wasn’t already out on multiple other platforms. Now, in 2025, it seems very strange to suggest that early access is just as valuable or useful.
Yes, I know that a lot of people who only own a PS5 might be really excited to play Forza Horizon 5 and they might be willing to shell out extra money to get their hands on the game sooner. But you don’t even need an Xbox or PC to play Forza Horizon 5. You can stream Horizon 5 via Game Pass Ultimate on your phone or tablet instantly and that will cost you a lot less than $100.
Ultimately, I’m probably wasting my time. I’ve already written about how greedy and shitty early-access pre-order bonuses are and how publishers are just delaying games for most people to squeeze out extra pennies from a few diehard fans who have no patience or self control.
And yet, despite me and many others pointing this out, a lot of people keep spending extra money to play games a few days early. As a result, publishers keep pushing their luck—adding more days, charging more money, or even offering multiple release dates depending on how much extra you pay. Now, we’ve reached the next level of fuckery and Xbox is charging early access for a years-old port of a game that is currently playable on any phone via streaming. The future sucks.
Correction: 2/27/2025, 4:05 p.m. ET: A prior version of this article incorrectly claimed Forza Horizon 5 didn’t offer an early access launch option on Xbox in 2021.
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