Forza Horizon 4 has been out for over 2 years now and while it is kind of a live services game because of its constantly updating seasons and goals, and it has some microtransactions, it is not a game that's driven (pun intended) by a constant drip of premium content. You basically have the VIP status and expansion pass it launched with, some car packs, and the ability to buy "spins" and in game if you really want to, even though the game showers you with both like candy, especially if you have the VIP add on.
Despite this, the game has been continually updated with a bunch of free DLC that has ranged from added events and even whole "storylines" (series of linked and voice acted unique races with special rewards) and even more substantial modes. They added a battle royale mode at the end of last year, and this year they've added the ability to build and challenge courses in the open world in a mode called Super 7. While Forza Horizon 4 has always had player build checkpoint races called "blueprints" you can now actually create special courses where you can put objects in the world like ramps and such in a mode that resembles Tony Hawk's "create a skatepark" mode, and you can challenge these player created courses in Super 7, which picks 7 of them (apparently at somewhat random) and challenges you to finish the assigned course or challenge as quickly as possible. It's a neat mode and a substantial free addition to a game that's been around for a long time.
While the modes themselves are cool, it's the fact that something this substantial is being added so long after launch that's more interesting to me. The game also added a car from Cyberpunk 2077, and a cross promotional small addition like that is normal even for an older game, but the Super 7 mode is more unusual for a game that's not really focused on keeping players engaged and spending. I attribute it to three major things.
1) Forza Horizon 5: There are rumors that Forza Horizon 5 is coming in 2021 and then Motorsport 8 in 2022. If that's the case then they are pretty far into the development of Forza Horizon 5, and I'd imagine work on that game explains why they did the Series S/X update for Forza Horizon 4 and also possibly the Super 7 mode. If they're using the Forza Horizon 4 engine as a base (as one assumes they are) then a lot of the work to get Horizon 5 ready is probably easily transferrable back to 4. If you upgrade the engine to work with Series X then putting that upgrade into Horizon 4 is probably not nearly as hard as if you were doing that from scratch. Likewise if they intend to have these create a playground features in 5 it's probably not that hard to create a version for 4. This is sort of the flipside of using assets from earlier games in sequels; inserting work done for the sequel back into the earlier game. I can't think of many examples where it's been done this substantially and I think it's pretty cool.
2) Gamepass: With Gamepass every game is kind of a subscription game. There are a lot of people playing Forza Horizon 4 through Gamepass and even if those people aren't buying microtransactions, keeping them happy playing Forza Horizon 4 gives Gamepass more value and makes them more likely to stay subscribed.
3) Xbox Series S/X: By now we've all discussed the lack of exclusives on these consoles, but Forza Horizon 4 is one of the best games that actually has Series X support, and giving people who own the new consoles a reason to jump back into that game and see it in its improved glory makes sense. There's probably a relatively large influx of players from people who either just got an Xbox for the first time or are looking for a game to show off what their new console can do, so this is a good time to add new content to Horizon 4.
The Forza Horizon series is one of my favorites of all time and it's great to see a game like Forza Horizon 4 get so much free post launch support. I also think that the fact that Gamepass gives Microsoft an incentive to keep updating its games beyond microtransactions is very interesting. Gears 5 did something similar with DLC that's free if you subscribe to Gamepass so this is kind of a trend, though the Forza update is free to everyone.
Anyway, Forza Horizon 4 is amazing, the update is nice and adds a new way to interact with the world, and I think that the idea of live services games that are supported by a single central subscription rather than microtransactions is much more appealing than the current model.
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