With the last few Forza Horizon entries, the team at Playground Games has made a big effort to provide post-launch support — with new expansions, seasonal content and plentiful updates — and it sounds as though leaving Xbox One behind with Forza Horizon 6 is going to allow the team to be even more ambitious with its live service plans this time around.
Speaking on its most recent video as part of IGN First, Playground talked a little bit about how Forza Horizon 5 evolved over time, and how leaving Xbox One behind this time has "freed our hands a little bit" in terms of what it can do with FH6 post-release.
Here's a quick quote on that:
"We've carried forward that technology to the next game, I feel that [live service] was one of the best investments that we made with Horizon 5 - and we've gone to some lengths to ensure we can do a bit more with that this time around as well.
Moving forward from the Xbox One generation of consoles has kind of freed our hands a little bit there, to give us some more potential. We've learned how to celebrate key moments through the year based on the previous game, and we definitely look forward to exploring those opportunities through the live program on Horizon 6 as well."
Indeed, aside from the first Forza Horizon game this is the first entry to drop Xbox One support - with Playground gunning for current-gen Xbox and eventually PlayStation releases in terms of the console versions. We're excited to see what the team can do without those last-gen shackles in place, and there seems to be a real focus on improving Horizon 6's post-launch support too.
We'll chuck a link to our other bit of coverage on this particular IGN First video down below, alongside some other recent Forza Horizon 6 goodness ahead of launch this May.