Now’s Your Last Chance to Get Forza Horizon 4 for Cheap Before It Disappears for Good

Personally, I don’t get into the whole Black Friday frenzy—it’s just too stressful, and these days I’m not looking for reasons to spend more money on stuff I wouldn’t otherwise buy. But Forza Horizon 4 being on sale for just $10 caught my eye because, if you didn’t know or don’t have the game already, FH4 just so happens to be going to the great digital graveyard in the sky on December 15, when it’s delisted from all storefronts and Xbox Game Pass for good.

Right now, you can score a deeply discounted download code for Forza Horizon 4 that covers both Xbox consoles and the Xbox app on Windows, courtesy of Amazon. (Sorry, Steam loyalists—it’s still full price for you.) The standard game is $10, a huge cut from its normal price of $60; while the Deluxe and Ultimate editions, which toss in more content, are priced at $15 and $20, respectively. Back in July, developer Playground Games shared that FH4 would be delisted on Dec. 15 of this year, so this represents one final opportunity to get one of the last generation’s finest racing games for a great price.

If you’re interested in FH4 but never played it, I’d recommend spending the extra $10 for the Ultimate edition that initially retailed for $100. That way, you’ll also get all of the game’s post-launch content, from paid DLC car packs to the LEGO Speed Champions expansion, which is basically another single-player campaign unto itself. Remember, it’s not just the base game that’s disappearing from stores after Dec. 15—so too is all of that extra paid content. In other words, it’s pretty much now or never. Thankfully, even after the delisting happens, FH4’s servers will remain live for multiplayer action.

Situations like this are all too common in modern gaming, but they have a habit of hitting racing games particularly hard because the genre depends on so many license negotiations with third parties. Forza Horizon 4 was released in October of 2018, and when all is said and done the title will have spent a little more than six years on the market. Of course, physical copies will still be out there and available for purchase, but they certainly won’t be as cheap, and if you snag a disc after Dec. 15, you won’t be able to buy any extra content.

Even still, it could be worse. You and your friends can still hop online and cruise in FH4 for the foreseeable future. Fans of The Crew who paid $60 or more for their copies, physical or digital, can no longer enjoy that racing game at all, as Ubisoft shut down its servers earlier this year and The Crew is entirely dependent on an online connection. At least all the Horizon games offer an offline mode, as lonely as it may feel.

Sony’s Driveclub, which hit the PS4 in 2014, is another example of a racing game with a mountain of post-launch content that is completely inaccessible today unless you bought it all while the game was still listed. It’s a shame, because Driveclub ended up a phenomenal game even though it launched in a poor state, and those extra cars (and bikes) certainly improved the experience. I also regret that there’s no way to purchase any version of Sega’s OutRun 2 on modern platforms, because Sega’s licensing deal with Ferrari ended more than a decade ago, forcing the publisher to remove the digital-only OutRun Online Arcade from sale.

As for Forza Horizon 4, it’s not one I imagine myself returning to anytime soon—the series isn’t really my bag—but it is a massive game and an earnest love letter to Playground Games’ home, as it’s set in the U.K. FH4 was also the first entry in the franchise to introduce a seasonal weather system, which not only looked stunning but imposed a marked effect on gameplay, particularly when winter descends on the isle. The game works on everything from the original Xbox One to today’s Series consoles and runs fantastically on the Xbox One X. It’s also a very light lift for modern PCs, thanks to its age. Snag yourself a copy at Amazon if you haven’t got one already.

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