Forza Motorsport 7 Is Reaching 'End Of Life' Status, Will Leave Xbox Game Pass This September

Can someone explain why they would remove this game from Game Pass if Microsoft owns the IP anyway? Is it a licensing thing with the cars / music?

Will be interested to see what the next Forza Motorsport brings.
I tried 7 (a few times) and found it exceedingly dull... kept thinking that I must be missing something, but I don't think so.

Loved Horizon 4 though, have had a decent bit of play out of Dirt 5, plus the new Grid trailer looks promising (the racing bits, not the driver story nonsense). So with FH5 coming soon as well, I'm pretty well covered for racing games.

I do wish there was a good purely city street based racer out there though, like Project Gotham.

@Turnip_Knight

Yeah, it'll be 2 things...

1) licensing
2) move the player base to the new game

Mainly the first of the above.

I would hope that MS start looking to sign longer (or perpetual) licenses to be able to keep their games on gamepass indefinitely.

They seem to be giving away free standard edition codes via xbox. I got one.

Don't suppose this could be leading to a surprise early drop for the new Motorsport this autumn/winter?
I kinda doubt it... But then FH5 was unexpected (until the leak).

@SplooshDmg it does indeed say that but I've never bought a dlc pack for FM7. Only add ons I have are the free ones.

@SplooshDmg Would it still be playable if you picked up a disc version from CeX?

@SplooshDmg maybe. It's nice of them at least, shame I own it already

@notleks_
Yeah, you should be fine... it'll get withdrawn from digital sale (and gamepass) but still be playable.
One day, in the distant future, they may turn off server support for online multiplayer etc, but you can still do the single player offline stuff.

@antstephenson
Spot on about Forza 7 being dull. I loved FM6 personally. Better soundtrack, better visuals (yes, I said it, something about the post-processing effects made the cars look like plastic toys in FM7), more interesting career mode. I hope FM8 is more like 6 than 7.

I'm still wondering if they're holding back on the new one so it doesn't launch too far ahead of GT7, since that's it's direct competitor and Sony will be promoting it very heavily.

@antstephenson It's good but it's very dry. It's a pure racing simulator, not as dry as Project Cars, Asseto Corsa, etc. but for a console racer, as dry and pure as Flight Sim.

This is the most stupid thing EVER. The things I had to do to buy Forza Horizon 3 lol no other racing games simply become unavailable but for some reason this happens with Forza. It's so dumb....
Glad I don't like Motorsport that much, but it still pisses me off I can't buy Horizon 3 dlc 🤦‍♂️

@NEStalgia the last FM I played was 3 I think, which I enjoyed a bit... Think it has some nice racing around the Amalfi coast... But was shocked when I tried 7 and found it so dull.
Thank God for Forza Horizon... I still think there is a middle ground between the two though (which was where Project Gotham sat).

@antstephenson sounds like Horizon is more for you. Motorsport is as sim as they come; no flashiness or bombast, just track racing and tuning.

@VenomousAlbino
I do like Horizon a lot... but, I guess I'll never be truly happy until there's another Project Gotham 😆

@antstephenson It breaks my heart that PGR has been completely abandoned by MS. I spent an ungodly amount of hours playing PGR2 online, some of my happiest gaming moments ever!

@Shigurui
For some reason I didn't play pgr 2 or 3 much.
I played 4 a LOT... But it was the original that will always be the benchmark of balanced play style and great tracks for me.

@antstephenson will never happen Ferrari are *****, i remember a few years back a developer i think it was the guys that made project gotham said that Ferrari was the hardest company to work with. and they didnt like to do lifetime licenses i think this was when that game was removed from the store due to licenses then too.

@antstephenson I played the hell out of all of them but 2 and 4 was where I spent the most time online. PGR1 was basically a remaster of Metropolis Street Racer, which I played to death on Dreamcast so it never really felt like a new game to me, it was 2 that really sucked me in.

I dumped crazy hours into 4 though, especially the bikes. I've no idea if the leaderboards are still up for 4 but I was in the top 10 in the world for every single bike event in that game. Happy days!

@Blessed_Koz I remember the newest outrun version, that came out on 360 years ago, had licensing issues with Ferrari(dicks), once again, resulting in the game getting pulled.

This really sucks. I had hoped they had moved on from having to delist Forza games. They could easily change the way they license these games. Plenty of licensed racing games don’t get delisted like this

@Blessed_Koz
To be honest... you could still make a great game without Ferrari (I know a lot of people may disagree).
You don't even really need to use the Project Gotham name either... call it Forza Metro or something. But yeah... I know PGR will never come back

@Shigurui
One of the things I loved in PGR 1 on the original Xbox, was being able to customise your playlist from the included tracks AND add tracks you copied from your CDs onto the Xbox.

I seem to remember having "borderline" by Madonna, "seven days in the sun" by Feeder (both from CD} and "beat em up" Iggy Pop (from in game) on my playlist.

I think my go-to track on PGR4 was "heart of hearts" by !!!

I wish the Forza Horizon games built in integration with Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music etc.... would be great (I know you can open up the Spotify app separately to play in the background, but having integration, where you could skip tracks and choose playlists using the d_pad would be cool).
That's prob my one gripe with Horizon, is that the selection of music is small (and for me, really only has 3 tracks I like).

After playing and enjoying FM4 on the 360, I played GT Sport. That was dull - people have said FM7 is dull? No no, try GTS. They literally took everything I liked about the GT series and binned it. FM7 was the saving grace for my racing needs (on console, anyway)

I was going to pick this up as I've been wanting to try it for a while, but if I'm honest I'm not likely to play it any time soon, and by the time I do get around to it, 8 will probably be on Game Pass anyway, so I think I'll pass.

Reading some of the comments here suggests that it wasn't the best entry in the series anyway, but still a few weeks to try it before it leaves Game Pass I suppose I could try it anyway.

@antstephenson Yeah being able to customise the playlist was great. The PGR series always had brilliant music so I never ripped my own stuff to add in, that was a great OG Xbox feature though.

Mmmmm by Grandadbob, Fight Test by Flaming Lips and Brand New Aria by Asuka were my go-to tunes in PGR2. For PGR4 it was always Our Velocity by Maximo Park, Wolf Like Me by TV on the Radio and Light Grenades by Incubus.

Well, that is strange. Isn't that game owned by Microsoft? Removing it from the pass is a bit disconcerting. I always thought, at least their own titles would stay.

@lokozar
Yep, but per the comments earlier in the thread, it is a licensing issue... i.e. they only "rent" the right to use the manufacturers cars (games with pop music soundtracks also effectively "rent" the right to use it... usually for a limited period).
I'm hoping that Microsoft figure out a perpetual licence solution for future games.

@SplooshDmg sure, but I can buy GT with ease, and Horizon was hard even though it's only last gen

@antstephenson
Got it. Thanks for the summary. I am less concerned now.

@antstephenson PGR was and is my fav racing game ever...it was enough sim to fun but enough arcade to be forgiving....all around just a fun game....

@Blessed_Koz
Exactly... the gameplay and handling was perfectly balanced between arcade and sim... never found another game like it.
Driveclub was ok, but leaned a bit more to the dry sim side. Forza Horizon is fantastic, though very arcade handling.