Xbox and Playground Games have some new treats for folks that purchased the right extras with their copy of Forza Horizon 3. It’s adding some new cars through an update to the Car Pass today. That isn’t the biggest news though. A new Forza Horizon 3 Expansion Pass that includes snow content is garnering more attention because of how Ultimate Edition buyers get their hands on it.
Microsoft confirmed Forza Horizon 3’s Alpinestars Car Pack update this morning on it’s Xbox Wire news blog. There are seven new cars in all, the 1998 Nissan Silvia K, the 1990 Mazda Savanna RX-7, the 2017 Acura NSX, the 1967 Ford Falcon XR GT, the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR, the 2016 BMW M4 GTS and the 1979 Tablot Lotus Sunbeam. If you didn’t buy Forza Horizon 3 Ultimate Edition, you can get the Car Pass for $29.99 through the Xbox Store.
As for that snow-related content, today’s blog post only reveals that Playground Games and Microsoft have plans to add winter driving content. Because the two only provided a teaser image, we don’t know when the expansion will launch or how much it’ll cost individually. We do know that Forza Horizon 3 Ultimate Edition owners don’t get expansions for free, it seems. “Ultimate Edition owners will receive a discount of $10 on the Forza Horizon 3 Expansion Pass,” the company says. Those dedicated gamers will have to fork over another $34.99, before the discount, to get access to this upgrade and one other expansion happening sometime in 2017. To add insult to injury, they have to make the purchase by the end of the year for the savings.
Now I’m all for updates and business models, but I wouldn’t be too happy if someone had spent months talking about a $99 Ultimate Edition of a game, only to say that I needed to give them even more money for new driving modes after they’d convinced me to by that Ultimate Edition already. Either someone in marketing should have come up with a better name for the version of the game that came with early access and the Car Pass, or Microsoft needed to disclose the Expansion Pass’ existence before today.
That’s just me though.