While all the focus might be on the upcoming Forza Horizon 6 right now, Playground Games has announced a small but significant update for the outgoing Forza Horizon 5 title by way of eliminating the game’s main “FOMO” feature and adding a huge range of the rare cars to the Backstage area.
For those out of the loop with FH5, not all of the game’s 900-ish cars are available for purchase as and where you want. In fact the Autoshow, the permanent car dealership where you can buy whatever you like at any time, barely accounts for 55% of the car list. The remainder include DLC purchases and packs, higher-tier game privileges, cars unlocked through gameplay progression, “Wheelspin” rewards, and what’s known as “Playlist” cars.
This latter category has been a bit of a bone of contention across FH5‘s life, as these are vehicles you can only acquire by playing through the various challenges that appear in the rotating weekly Playlist. Once the Playlist is gone, at the end of its active week (or month), your chance to add the car to your collection is gone with it unless examples pop up in the Auction House (where players can sell their cars to other players) and you can get in before someone else pays the instant buy fee.
Playlists have been a staple of the series for some time now, and encouraged player participation each week in order to earn the rare rewards, but through “FOMO”: the Fear Of Missing Out. For the completionists this requirement to play the game for a couple of hours every Thursday (when the Playlists update) rankled and players felt it artificially boosted the title’s engaged player count.
Since moving FH5 into a twilight phase, starting back in October 2024, Playground Games has been throttling back the FOMO in phases. Firstly there was the addition of Horizon Backstage itself, offering some of these rare cars in exchange for a Backstage Pass (acquired through the Playlists). That was followed by player votes on returning Playlists, give players a second chance to earn some of the cars (which will continue for now), as well as what rare cars should be added to Backstage.
That too has ended with today’s announcement, which sees all of the remaining Playlist exclusives being added to Backstage. You’ll still need to pick up Backstage Passes through the Playlist, but any that you earn can be exchanged for any of these cars so that players who may have missed out on any offered across the 43 Playlists across 172 weeks since the title launched.
It somewhat marks the end of an era too, and at an appropriate time as Forza Horizon 5 is soon to be succeeded by Forza Horizon 6. Although Playground Games has confirmed that FH6 too will feature a Festival Playlist, it remains to be seen if lessons will be learned from the reaction to the FOMO systems in FH5 and indeed Forza Motorsport and what, if anything, will change.