How one game’s delisting pokes a hole in the Xbox Game Pass promise

Enlarge / Another sim racer bites the dust-and this time without a new one in its place. (credit: Xbox Game Studios / Turn 10)

Microsoft has long boasted about the backward compatibility of its Xbox consoles, letting you play hundreds of past-gen games on newer systems like the Series X/S. But the game publisher and console maker is quieter about taking older games down from its digital storefronts-and this week's latest casualty, in the form of a popular first-party game, presents problems for Xbox's recent sales pitches.

On paper, the basic announcement may look humdrum to savvy modern-gaming fans. Starting September 15, 2021, the sim racing game Forza Motorsport 7 will no longer be available on Xbox's digital download shops. That date marks roughly four years past the game's 2017 launch on Xbox One consoles, and "four years" is key. Since the Xbox Live download store has been in operation, other Forza games, both in the Motorsport and Horizon camps, have been delisted at a nearly identical cadence. This suggests that the game's car licenses factor into the cutoff dates.

Knocked out of the usual lineup

Look closely enough at major licenses in classic video games and you'll see a similar trend. Arguably the most prominent early example came when Nintendo began reprinting copies of its 1987 sports-action classic Punch-Out!! in 1990 without re-upping its original license deal with Mike Tyson, and it's not uncommon to see publishers either strip licenses from older games or give up on them altogether. For most of the modern gaming industry's history, four-year-old games have usually been relegated to bargain bins-especially if they receive regular sequels-so such a licensing term doesn't seem egregious.

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