I’m starting to think you’re confusing Forza Horizon with Forza Motosport
Forza Motorsport broadly, but in particular the latest Forza Motorsport, would be irrelevant on PS5. People playing GT7 for multiple years aren't likely to take a flyer on "GT7 except it isn't as good and has bad word of mouth from its disaster of a launch and bad PC port." It's functionally already a zombie game even as Microsoft still needs to lurch its live service road map to completion before making a new one.
It's still apples and oranges. Like suggesting Nintendo bringing Splatoon over to PS5 would be a big threat to Call of Duty.
It would be. Broadly,
any major first party Nintendo game being released off of a Nintendo platform would be a threat to any other game; but live service games
all inherently compete with each other. Even if you aren't spending money, time spent paying GT7 is time spent not playing Fortnite, Minecraft, Genshin Impact, Counter-Strike 2, Marvel Rivals, GTA V, etc. CCU numbers are extremely important to publishers. In some cases long term CCU is more important than initial sales.
Amittedly not of the same quality, but I truly believe people who bought GT over NFS, The Crew, Burnout etc in the past did it because GT offered something the other games did not.
And the same is true vice versa of course.
So while I do think Horizon will eat The Crew's and NFS's lunch I firmly believe the effect on GT is negligible.
And you'll be wrong. Just as assuredly so as the people playing Halo 3 who dismissed Modern Warfare, the people playing Overwatch 2 who dismissed Marvel Rivals, the people playing Tony Hawk Project 8 who dismissed Skate, people playing PUBG who dismissed Fortnite, and the people playing Forza Motorsport who dismissed Horizon. For damn sure Sony (who just had to write off 300 million dollars on Concord and spent 3 billion dollars on Bungie) and PD (who were trying to transform the Gran Turismo franchise into a monetized live service title in
2005) won't be so dismissive of a game that crested 40 million players a year ago making its way onto their console against their game that itself has always been popular (and justified its expensive price tag) because of its large casual appeal. Gran Turismo will likely always be more popular on PlayStation, but being more popular and "Having no competition so you can do whatever you want" aren't the same thing.
Lots of people playing GT7 now
will take a look at Forza Horizon 5. There's zero basis to claim otherwise. It's an extremely well regarded game with great critical reception (I'm guessing the best received racing game of the conse generation) and a strong player base and even more casual appeal than Gran Turismo has. And because of the nature of live service games, many people
will stick to it instead of going back. A lot of their friends will try it. If Microsoft is even remotely competent the gane will have an existing player pool that will keep online full of people to mix with new players. That is something that Sony and PD will have to take into account for the future of the GT series if Microsoft is as serious about their multiplaform push as they are claiming. To insist otherwise, that the ~10 million people who buy GT games every time would just ignore another racing game, not only represents the seclusion from the mainstream imparted inherently by being a member of a specific videogame's forum for over two decades, but a fundamental misunderstanding of what game publishers prioritize in the industry in 2025.
If you really insist that Horizon is similar to GT and not NFS.
Cool story. I not convinced you've ever touched a Horizon game if you think Burnout was ever even remotely similar to one; even if the last entry hadn't come out so long ago that the newest GTA game at the time was Vice City Stories.
Comparisons with GT7 will be completely unnecesarry as there are also no comparisons between Tomb Raider and Doom either.
People don't generally compare single player games in completely different genres the same way they do live service multiplayer games in the same genre, no.
I agree on that one.
Just because in my mind they are "open world racer" vs "circuit racer"
If that was a distinction that mattered that much to casual audiences the Gran Turismo series would be the same as it was in 2001 with online play attached to it. If that was a distinction that mattered that much to casual audiences the Motorsport half of the franchise wouldn't be comparably irrelevant for nearly a decade now in Xbox. People glowing up franchises on videogame forums dedicated to those franchises are not the tastemakers for the franchise for the casual audience that makes up the actual overwhelming majority of sales.
Publishers have lost a lot of money in the past when they forget that, the most infamous recent example probably being OWL.