Forza Horizon is one of my favorite games from last generation (probably my favorite racing title) so I was very excited when it was announced to be coming to backwards compatibility on the Xbox One. Unfortunately it seems like the emulation may not be 100% there, since the frame rate seems lower than when I played it in 2012, not leading to noticeable choppiness but just reducing that feeling of smoothness it had. It's playable on Xbox One but it loses something without that rock solid frame rate. I even loaded it up on my 360 to compare, and it's POSSIBLE it's just in my head, but it feels smoother there. I actually got lost for like 20 minutes just driving around in the 360 version because it felt so good.

In addition to the frame rate issue, I'm having trouble downloading the Rally expansion to the game. I bought the season pass at some point when it was on sale, and I can download that fine on both XBONE and 360, but when I try to load the rally expansion it fails to connect to the Xbox marketplace on both systems. I can't find much about this on the net, but has anyone else experienced this and does anyone have a solution? Unfortunately I can't just download the rally expansion from the Xbox marketplace because it's one of those dumb season passes that only grants access to stuff from within the game (so I'd have to pay again), but I can't download it from within the game either. I thought this might just be on the Xbone but it's not, the same problem exists on the 360.

Appreciate any help.

I'm still pretty stoked about Horizon 3, but I'd like to go through the rally content in Horizon 1 before it launches!

I think quitting out any other apps or just restarting the console and freshly launching the game is supposed to alleviate the frame rate issue. Xbox BC is a weird thing. Gears of War 3 had just enough input delay that I would rather go through the inconvenience of booting up my 360 to enjoy it at its best. But then there are examples like Red Dead that run noticeably smoother.

Not sure about the marketplace issue but hopefully they address it. EDIT: Looks like anything that has to connect to their server is pretty much broken. I was able to DL the Rally stuff from the Manage Game screen but I already owned it on 360.

Digital Foundry took a look at Horizon, as they do most high profile new back compat games, and it runs fine for them. The framerate issue isn't experienced by everyone, and right now doesn't sound like it's replicable. I've seen some say that a hard reset temporarily fixes the issues for them.

I haven't heard any issues about DLC.

I've played some more and there are definitely some frame problems (at least for me) including a couple points where the game hitched. I might try moving it to my internal hard drive and seeing if that solves the issue, as it does for some, though my external is plenty fast.

I've also heard that the online services in general for this game might be messed up right now (there's some talk of this on the Xbox One subreddit.) My guess is that they were not prepared for the flood of new players from when the game went free on Games With Gold, which seems kind of dumb considering they gave millions of digital copies of the game away so it's not surprising there would be a swell in player base.

On the bright side, I was not wrong in my love for this game. Even though the graphics are no longer cutting edge it's still a beautiful game, and more importantly it's still a lot of fun to drive in it. It also has an incredible vibe, helped by the beautiful day night cycle effects (amazing sunsets) and the highly underrated soundtracks. I can't think of a licensed soundtrack for a game I've liked more in the last 5 years.

What a gem Forza Horizon is. Just a pleasure to play. I'm getting super hyped for Forza Horizon 3 now. I liked the second game a lot, even loved it, but I hope 3 can recapture the magic that the first one had.

Something about sliding into a drift while your GPS gently chides you for going the wrong way and you're like "Nah, I'm gonna see what's over here" and some great music plays on the in-game radio...just blissful. Absolutely blissful.

They're apparently working on a patch to address the stuttering issues.

I've had the random frame rate dips last minutes. It sucks, but I found that fast traveling somewhere ends it. I had it during a race once and it was awful.

As for DLC, I had something similar from replacing a broken 360.

I first played my digital copy of Horizon on my old 360, which recently died. I got a used 360E replacement (that original console was several RRoD replacements newer than the first purchase but was still a ~2007 era console with no warranty left) and downloaded the game...

Main menu, into new game, intro video plays and... hard crash. Every time.

Turns out I needed to do the license transfer thing in the system menu to activate the license on the machine and then download the game again. Without that then there is some severely broken connectivity/DRM issues with using the game you own.

I'm wondering if you're playing a disc copy (so the base game still works) but the DLC's DRM is tied to an old console and so you need to do a license transfer to get it to recognise that and work (allowing you to download the stuff you own).

The rally DLC isn't the longest of expansions but it is really good fun, highly recommended to persevere if you can. The new handling tweaks are good and the race layouts reward rally experimentation. Unlike most Forza games, I turned off the braking line because experimenting actually pushed me to the top of my car club. I also like how the AI opponent times you're up against (on the harder difficulties) are genuinely challenging: getting to number 1 is no expected result and you'll be well into the top percent of the leaderboards before you're at the sharp end of the top AI difficulty.

It's a real shame most people never got round to playing it (not even helped by the season pass sales and being a Forza game that actually included the expansion content in that pass - something Forza games have moved away from), at least from what the leaderboards indicate. There are 3.8 million results for the main game leaderboards (but that quickly drops off as only 3.3 million have finished the first block of races, only 996k have results for the final main race of the [very short by Forza season standards] campaign). The 1000 Club free DLC got 1.8 million results for the leaderboard so plenty of people came back when that DLC dropped. I'm looking at 315k results on the very first stage of the first event of the rally DLC. So under 10% of players who played it online.

@bigsocrates: For 360 Back Compat. games on the X1 you can't download items from the ingame marketplaces. Go to My Games & Apps on the X1, highlight the game, open the options dialoge (I don't remember if it is Start or Select or excuse me "Menu" or "View"), then Manage Content. Your owned DLC should appear under items that are ready to install.

You can't download season pass items directly from the system level because you have to pay again; they're not tagged as you owning them just because you own the season pass for the Forza Horizon season pass. Regardless of this, as I said in my original post I switched to my 360 (which is the only 360 I've owned since Horizon came out) to try to get around just this issue and it still wouldn't let me download. The servers are not working right now. This also manifests in multiplayer problems and an inability to synch medals from the 1000 club expansion (which I could download directly because it's free for everyone.)

I'm never "complains about framerate guy", but holy crap, does the BC version of this game have some issues. I was hitting spots last night where it was in the single digits (and by that I mean like 2-3 FPS), which is downright unplayable. Twice I thought the game had actually locked up because it stuck on the same frame for several seconds, only to then skip ahead to have my car crashed against a wall. One of these was particularly hilarious, as I'd managed to go way faster than the textures were popping in, and it froze for four seconds with my car in the middle of a green blur by a fuzzy, lit building-looking thing, both of which were clearly displaying the very lowest quality textures that were only intended to be rendered from in-game miles away. It was like my lovingly rendered Viper drove into a N64 game for a second. Then it figured it out and instantly trees, a field, the full building, and the fence I had apparently crashed into appeared. I barely missed the screenshot, which was really upsetting because it was awesome in a broken kind of way.

In fairness, I was downloading the huge 2.8 GB patch for Rocket League at the same time, so maybe that was a factor, but boy, this was running like garbage. It's too bad, too, as I was enjoying it a great deal when it was working. I had missed this game the first time around, and as a huge fan of Horizon 2, it's cool to see its roots. I just hope the wonkiness of this BC version doesn't turn people off of Horizon 3, as I'm sure the intent was to introduce people to the franchise before Horizon 3 drops in a few weeks. It needs a patch, to say the least. Regardless, I'm glad I got to play it (and for free) before I dump some serious time into Horizon 3 shortly.

Yeah I am having the same issue here. Can not access the Rally mode but own it and the DLC is not listed on the My Games and Apps process either (where you go to manage the game and can install available DLC usually from there). Has anybody got the Rally mode on Xbox One as perhaps its an issue with the game over something we are missing?

is there even a way to get forza horizon digitally on xbox one?

Yes. It's free on games with gold so you can download from that page, or if you own it digitally it should be in your "available games" library section. I don't know if there's an issue for you but it seems easy. You should be able to buy it from the marketplace on the web.

I've had a few situations where during races the frame rate would lower to like 2 fps and the textures and geometry would start just popping in and out. Hasn't happened in a while though.

@bigsocrates: nevermind, im an idiot as always. i first searched and couldnt find it, thought you actually had to be on a 360 to download it or something. i renewed my xbox live for a month and it showed up under games in the marketplace. again probably my fault for being an idiot but i forgot the xbone interface is kind of a nightmare. sorry!

now to see if i can find burnout revenge; supposedly thats BC now too.

Burnout is BC? I thought that wasn't happening.

I did a hard reboot and it fixed the stuttering for me. Runs pretty smooth 30fps now.

The marketplace issues appear fixed now. I was able to go in on Xbox One and get the rally expansion for free from inside the game (I have the season pass, which is why it was free.)

I don't know if this is going to be in time for me to actually play much of it before Forza Horizon 3 arrives but better late than never, I guess. Maybe I'll play it some day.

@bigsocrates: Thanks for the info. Just downloaded the rally dlc now. Has the frame rate issue been resolved do you know?

@johnlocke: based on my experience the answer is no.

@bigsocrates: Just want to update the thread - apparently there's been a BC patch for the fps stuttering in Horizon 1. The original Gears games also received an update.