Six years after being delisted, the original Forza Horizon made a brief reappearance on the Xbox Store on Saturday, according to a variety of Twitter users who managed to successfully access the popular Xbox 360 racing title.
Forza Horizon was initially delisted from all storefronts in 2016, but eagle-eyed fans reported the game showed up for $19.99 for a short while before disappearing again a few hours later. It’s unknown whether the relisting is indication that Xbox is planning to bring the game back to the store or if someone at Xbox just made a mistake that caused it to pop back up for a little while.
Either way, the eventual removal of Forza games is a common practice for Microsoft, as the third party licensing deals run out for the series’ wide selection of cars, tracks, songs, and more. In September 2021, Forza Motorsport 7 became the most recent game in the franchise to be delisted – 4 years after it was released on Xbox One.
Developer Turn10 is hard at work on an upcoming reboot of the mainline Forza Motorsport series, though news about the game has trickled out very slowly since its original reveal back in 2020. What we know so far is that it will act as a fresh start for the franchise, leveraging the power of the Xbox Series X – meaning that the game won’t land on Xbox One. It will also launch on Xbox Game Pass on day one.
In the meantime, fans can get their hands on the team’s well-received sandbox racer Forza Horizon 5, which we gave a perfect score in our review, calling it “a deep and nuanced car nirvana for revheads and auto geeks to endlessly collect, tinker, and experiment.”
Billy Givens is a freelance writer at IGN.