Microsoft’s beautiful British rural racer Forza Horizon 4 arrives on March 9, the company announced today. This is the latest in a long line of first-party Microsoft games to appear on competitive platforms, and the first time that a Force game has ever appeared on Valve’s store window.
The Steam version of Forza Horizon 4 will include cross-play with all other versions, including on the console and on smartphones via xCloud streaming. It will also continue to be upgraded as the console version has, starting with a Hot Wheels Legends car package that will arrive somewhere in the near future.
Forza Horizon 4 has received a lot of updates since it was originally released on Xbox One and PC through the Microsoft Store, including the dull but picturesque Fortune Island expansion back in 2018 and a brick-crushing Lego expansion in 2019. Forza Horizon 4 makers Playground Games even added a battle royal mode at some point.
Microsoft has recently brought many of its games to Steam, including Rat 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Sea of Thieves, and others. Although these games were already available on a computer through the Microsoft Store, the Steam versions led to additional sales and, most importantly, a new source of new players. Microsoft announced last year that Sea of Thieves sold another one million copies in the first few weeks after coming on Valve’s platform.
It is not clear where this leaves the rest of the country. Force series. 2017’s more sim-racer-focused Forza Motorsport 7 is still not on Steam, and it’s not clear if the sequel is currently titled Forza Motorsport, will also be available there. The game has been revealed at last summer’s Xbox Series X showcase, although it does not yet have a release date.
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Update – 2:08 PM ET, 2/8/21: In a follow-up statement to Kotaku, Microsoft has confirmed that Forza Horizon 4 will not support Cross Progress and that any storage data from the existing version of the game will not be transferred to the Steam version:
‘Forza Horizon 4 ‘ on Steam is considered a separate purchase outside the Xbox ecosystem, although cross-play allows online players to automatically share sessions across platforms. Storing files and overall progress on Steam is completely unique and separate from any existing storage file associated with a player’s Xbox Live game tag. However, two exceptions that are being transferred from Xbox to Steam are Leaderboards and Clubs, both of which are one per game tag.