Why Forza Horizon 5 skipping a physical PS5 release matters

Sales numbers for video games on disc continue to head downwards quicker than Tesla’s stock price of late. In the UK during 2024, for example, physical game sales dropped by 34.5%, in a market that dipped 4.4% in total, according to the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association.

On PC, they are virtually non-existent, and for Xbox console owners, the Game Pass subscription is ever-present.

But – physical copies are important for game preservation. 30 years from now, popular and culturally significant books, movies and TV shows (outside of Netflix, seemingly) will continue to circulate. But, if digital store servers are switched off, swathes of video games could become unplayable.

You can never, ever, guarantee that a gaming ecosystem will last forever or that future devices are backwards compatible. Look to Segam (Dreamcast), Nokia N-gage, Gizmondo and even, more recently, Google Stadia. That digital store has been vanquished.

Forza Horizon 5 is one of the, if not the, most played racing games of the decade so far (based on a combination of Steam Charts, but also Google Trend data). It is a pivotal moment in racing video game history, and I’d argue, Microsoft’s most successful first-party release of the current generation.

So when the Forza Horizon social media accounts confirmed that “there are no current plans for a physical version!”, I was a little concerned.

Not just from a distant future preservation standpoint, but rather more specifically, historical precedent for the Forza series.

Of the 13 games in the series – eight are Forza Motorsport and five are Forza Horizon –  only two remain on sale (or Game Pass).

Forza Horizon 4 was permanently delisted for digital stores and subscriptions just over two months ago – an open world racing game that some, the Traxion team especially, regard as better than the most-recent version.

If you didn’t already own it, there only way of experiencing it in 2025 is a used Xbox physical copy.

The reason for the delisting of its predecessors, according to Microsoft, was “due to agreements with licensing and other partnerships ending.”

So, we’re in a scenario now where the most-popular driving game right now, on the planet’s most popular home console (late 2024 estimates put the PS5 as 31.8 million units ahead of the Xbox Series X|S) won’t have a physical version.

Facing almost certain delisting a couple of years from now, perhaps when the inevitable Forza Horizon 6 hits the market, the PlayStation 5 version will vanish and your local Computer Exchange won’t have a copy to sell used…