What you need to know
- Turn10 Studios and Playground Games host Forza Monthly streams to discuss the future of Forza.
- Forza Monthly June 2022 was packed with information on Forza Motorsport (2023), Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels, and Forza Horizon 5 Series 9.
- The focus of the stream was on FH5, which is getting plenty of new cars, fixes, and improvements in the next Festival Playlist update.
- Co-op Horizon Stories, PC temporal anti-aliasing support, the last Car Pass cars, and more are all included.
Forza is one of the most successful racing franchises of all time, and it's future is looking incredible bright with the continued evolution of Forza Horizon 5 and the upcoming release of Forza Motorsport (2023). During Forza Monthly June 2022, Turn10 Studios and Playground Games discussed both games, especially what players can expect in the next month for FH5.
Forza Horizon 5 is looking at a particularly busy next few weeks, with Playground Games gearing up to release the first Forza Horizon 5 DLC expansion, Hot Wheels on July 19, 2022. The expansion will include a ton of new content for players to explore, including four new biomes, 10 new cars, a standalone campaign, and much more.
Additionally, Series 9 of the Forza Horizon 5 Festival Playlist arrives next week with more new cars, a plethora of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements, a handful of new features, and an overarching theme of "Hot Wheels" to usher in the expansion releasing immediately after its conclusion. Playground Games discussed all of this during Forza Monthly June 2022, including:
- Forza Horizon 5 Series 9 "Hot Wheels" will keep players occupied with various races, events, and references inspired by Hot Wheels.
- Two of the four new reward cars in Series 9 are new Hot Wheels additions
- New Vanity Items branded with Hot Wheels will also be available to collect
- Seasonal Playground Games variants can focus on specific game modes, instead of rotating between all of them
- A new Series Rivals event called "Forza EV" debuts with Series 9, focusing on awesome electric vehicles in FH5
- Forza Horizon 5 Festival Playlist cars include four new additions with Series 9, with two classic muscle cars and two Hot Wheels cars being available to players who complete enough of each Season's challenges.
- 1957 Hot Wheels Nash Metropolitan Custom
- 1968 Plymouth Barracuda Formula-S
- 1970 Dodge Coronet Super Bee
- 2018 Hot Wheels 2JetZ
- Final Forza Horizon 5 Car Pass cars are being released alongside Forza Horizon 5 Series 9. After the release of these three vehicles, all 42 Forza Horizon 5 Car Pass cars will be available to owners.
- 2019 Nissan 370Z Nismo
- 2020 Lexus RC F Track Edition
- 2021 Aston Martin DBX
- Co-op Horizon Stories are arriving with the Series 9 update, letting up to six players jump into any chapter of every Horizon Story together.
- A huge number of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements are coming with Forza Horizon 5 Series 9, including (but not limited to):
- Temporal anti-aliasing support for PC players, which is particularly effective on high-end systems at 1080p
- A new "Duplicates" car filter in the Garage to filter out all cars that have duplicates
- New advanced camera controls in EventLab
- Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels includes a plethora of fresh content for players to explore, with new details revealed during the stream, including:
- The Hot Wheels Academy, which is Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheel's standalone campaign
- Players will begin as a rookie locked to B-Class cars, then slowly progress up the ranks and to more powerful cars, before finally becoming a champion capable of mastering X-Class cars
- Hot Wheel's infamous "Spectraflame" paint is not only featuring prominently on a new Hot Wheels car, it will also become available for players to apply to all cars in the game
- While Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels focuses on races on the varied Hot Wheels tracks, players will have plenty of areas on which to drive on the four new biomes
- Additional Bonus Boards will be scattered around the expanded map for players to smash
- Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels features a new Horizon Story for players to complete, with co-op support included
- Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels cars will include four brand-new Hot Wheels additions to the Forza franchise exclusive to the expansion, including:
- 2000 Hot Wheels Deora II
- 2012 Hot Wheels Bad to the Blade
- 2013 Hot Wheels Baja Bone Shaker
- 2018 Hot Wheels Chevrolet Camaro COPO
- Other additional Hot Wheels cars are returning in Forza Horizon 5, and will be available from Series 9 through Horizon Wheelspins, or through the Hot Wheels expansion. These cars include:
- 1949 Hot Wheels Ford F-5 Dually Custom Hot Rod
- 2005 Hot Wheels Ford Mustang
- 2012 Hot Wheels Rip Rod
Turn10 Studios opened the Forza Monthly show to discuss Forza Motorsport (2023), although there wasn't a ton of new information to glean from the conversation, which was more summarizing information that was scattered across the last year of announcements. However, Forza Motorsport creative director Chris Esaki did confirm some new tidbits, including:
- Every track in Forza Motorsport (2023) is built from the ground up to take full advantage of the game's new systems and models, including dynamic time of day, lighting, and weather systems on every track.
- Real-time ray tracing is fully enabled in-game, during races as opposed to other racing games like Forza Horizon 5 and Gran Turismo 7, which limits ray tracing to specific modes.
- Five tracks have already been shown, while many more are slated to be shown in the future.
- Nearly 40 cars have already been shown, with many more to be shown in the future. Turn10 Studios is focusing on modern, motorsport-centric cars with Forza Motorsport (2023), and the cars that have been shown reflect this focus. The studio is planning a deep dive into the game's car list ahead of launch.
Racing fans, particularly those of the Forza franchise, are looking forward to a huge amount of new content in the next year. Forza Horizon 5, already labeled as one of the best Xbox racing games you can play, is being massively expanded upon in the coming weeks and months. On the other hand, the next year is bringing us Forza Motorsport (2023), which could be a technical and visual showcase for Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels officially releases on July 19, 2022, less than a week after the Series 9 Festival Playlist ends, and is coming to Xbox consoles and PC. You can preorder the expansion now, or gain access to it through the Premium Add-ons Bundle DLC or Expansions Bundle DLC. Xbox and PC Game Pass subscribers can also enjoy a discount on all DLC purchases for Forza Horizon 5.
