Every console tested: can Xbox One really run Forza Horizon 5?

We called it an Xbox Series X masterpiece and that isn’t hyperbole – Playground Games has delivered a phenomenal game and a sensational audio-visual experience for its flagship console. However, this is a cross-gen release: somehow, Forza Horizon 5 has to run on last-gen machines and still live up to the expectations of quality expected from a first-party studio production. Admittedly, we were sceptical about its chances but Playground Games was always optimistic – and having put every version through its paces, the studio has delivered.

Quite how Playground would deliver this was always the crucial question and it was very satisfying to visit the studio a few weeks back to see exactly how it was done, my tour kicking off with a look at a remarkable cross-platform comparison system the studio developed. Using one controller and a network of Xbox consoles, I was able to see the demanding jungle stage of the intro drive playing out in real-time across five of the six iterations of the game, with the debug camera used to zero in on the various rendering techniques Playground had developed for the game. From there, moving from left to right, I could see how each console delivered the scene: Xbox Series X quality and performance, Series S equivalents, then finally, the base Xbox One. Xbox One X? I didn’t see that but I needn’t have worried, it’s a fitting send-off for the Microsoft’s first 4K console.

The set-up I saw is testament to the time and effort Playground has put into ensuring a decent experience for every console. Essentially and perhaps not surprisingly, it’s all about scalability. The core technologies developed for Forza Horizon 5 look phenomenal on Series X but almost all of them are present in a lower precision form on the base Xbox One. Proper volumetric lighting is added, for example. It’s of a much higher resolution on Series X, but it’s still there on Xbox One – with an added post-process pass to eliminate low res artefacts. The brand new surfel-based global illumination system – that’s there too. Probably the most noticeable difference at the core system level is foliage lighting: Playground developed a new system to simulate how light passes through vegetation and it’s present on all systems, except Xbox One.