We're just under a week from Forza Horizon 5's November 9 release date, so what better time to sit down with developer Playground Games and talk about the game? We got in the driver's seat with creative director Mike Brown and technical art director Gareth Harwood to talk shop about the importance of accessibility, why ray tracing is limited to the Forzavista model viewer, and how SSDs transformed the team's design approach.
Playground Games recently revealed the Forza Horizon 5 system requirements, which recommends an SSD if you want to hit the 'Ideal' specification. While the best gaming SSDs have been commonplace in gaming PCs for many years, consoles were stuck with HDDs until the arrival of the new Xbox Series X, S, and PS5.
Brown says that "SSDs have really benefitted us in terms of Forza Horizon 5's design. Having the Xbox One as our previous lead platform, with its HDD, we had to be very conscious of loading times and be strategic in what cars we gave the player and what cars would race with them." He elaborates, "this problem kind of goes away with an SSD, and we're able to give the player more cars than we ever have previously and have you changing between them more frequently."
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