The studio has stated, however, that both of the games will still be fully playable offline. Turn 10 states that it made the decision because of the age of both games, and the fact that both titles had small player populations.

It is also worth noting that, while it is no longer possible to buy the first two Forza Horizon games, those who did purchase them can freely download them again to play single-player content.

Online features for more recent games in the Forza Horizon franchise—specifically 3 and upwards—will continue to be available and the studio doesn’t seem to have plans to change that soon.

Grand Theft Auto 5 – Xbox 360/PS3

Rockstar delivered an excellent open world in the form of Grand Theft Auto 5, which features an extensive single player campaign alongside a live service multiplayer component that continues to rake in enormous cash to this date. Grand Theft Auto 5 was originally released for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and while it did certainly push those systems to their absolute limits – there were visible signs of crack all around. The textures were blurry, and the dense world streaming caused loads of slowdowns and frame rate drops which resulted in a very sloppy experience.

Further making matters worse is that support for the online component has been prematurely shut down for these platforms, and those who previously played the game on the seventh generation platforms couldn’t team up with those on PS4 and Xbox One. While that doesn’t completely ruin the enjoyment of the game, there’s little doubt that it is a compromising experience that would have been best if it was restricted to the eighth gen machines only.

The latest set of weekly deals for Xbox Deals with Gold has been revealed. These deals are available only for Xbox Live Gold members and was announced by Director of Programming Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb. The list of games with discounts include a large number of Xbox One titles and a select few Xbox 360 titles as well.

Some of the interesting offers include Diablo III: Eternal Collection for $30, 101 Ways to Die for $5 and many more such titles such as Furi and Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 Season Pass Edition. The list also include DLC content such as Diablo III: Rise of the Necromancer for $10 and Forza Horizon 3 Blizzard Mountain for $7.99. Xbox 360 titles include Alien Hominid HD for $4.99, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls- Ultimate Evil Edition for $15.99 and Forza Horizon 2 for $9.89.

All of these offers are only available to Xbox Live Gold members and they remain available until January 8. There’s certainly a lot of games and add-ons to choose from to start off the new year.

This week’s sales for Xbox Live Gold subscribers are actually pretty damn good- if only because some of the best exclusives on the Xbox are being offered for cheaper prices. Forza Motorsport 5 and Forza Horizon 2 are both on sale this week for Xbox Live Gold members.

Forza Motorsport 5 was an Xbox One launch game, and was honestly considered rather disappointing, thanks to a lack of content, as well as a misguided emphasis on microtransactions; it has since been succeeded by the far superior Forza Motorsport 6. However, for the current asking price, it’s not a bad buy at all. Forza Horizon 2 on the other hand is flat out a great racing game, possibly the best (non Kart) racing game of this generation- so being able to get it for as cheap as it is being offered for is a pretty sweet proposition.

On the Xbox 360 front, you can get Syndicate for  cheap, should you want them- but really, the Xbox One is the star of the show this week.

On the whole, Microsoft never showed us the promise of the cloud like they said they would with the Xbox One- but some of the best games on the platform all silently utilize the cloud in the background to deliver a great experience that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

Take the Forza games on the Xbox One. All three – Forza Motorsport 5, Forza Horizon 2, Forza Motorsport 6 – use the cloud to power their great Drivatar technology, where the AI is reactive, learns from the player, and steps its game up. Among other things.

Former FOX Engine lead designer Julien Merceron (currently working with Bandai Namco) was impressed with this technology, and he thinks that it has incredible potential for other games in the future, reports DualShockers. The possibilities of synchronous, asynchronous, passive, active, and persistent multiplayer, as well as that of the AI learning and growing in response to the player, intrigues him- and he thinks something like this has applications in other video games.

Personally, I think cloud assisted gaming eventually will become a thing- I just think that by trying to push it as the central focus, and by trying to push it now, when the world isn’t ready for it, not even from an infrastructure perspective, Microsoft may have made a bit of a mistake.

Microsoft may be focusing all of its efforts on Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport 6 right now but Playground Games still continues to support Forza Horizon 2 with new DLC. The latest is the IGN Car Pack which will launch exclusively on the Xbox One for $5 and add five new cars for players (the sixth is free for all).

These cars include the 2013 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S, 2015 Audi S1, 2011 Lotus Evora S, 1971 Plymouth GTX 426 HEMI muscle car and the 2014 Nissan Juke Nismo RS. You can purchase the pack from either the Forza Hub app or through the Xbox Store. The free car will be the 2002 Ferrari 575 Maranello.

As for Forza Motorsport 6, it will release on September 15th in North America and September 18th in Europe for the Xbox One. It will include more than 450 cars and real-time weather effects along with other new features. Will you be picking it up? Let us know in the comments below.

One of the tragedy of modern gaming is that most racing and car games cannot include Porsche in their rosters- EA holds the exclusive rights to have Porsche in video games, and they keep a very tight grip on those. Nonetheless, we have seen them relent a couple of times before, such as with the Porsche expansion that they previously allowed for Forza Motorsport 4. And now, it appears that it has happened again, as Forza Horizon 2 will also be getting a Porsche expansion pack.

The Porsche Expansion Pack will cost $9.99, and it will be available tomorrow. It will by no means be extensive or thorough, but it does hit all the important points, as it appears it will have all historically significant cars, as well as representation from each era in Porsche’s history. The full list of cars that will be available is:

• 1970 Porsche 914/6
• 1982 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.3
• 1987 Porsche 959
• 1989 Porsche 944 Turbo
• 2003 Porsche Carrera GT
• 2012 Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0 (997)
• 2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S
• 2014 Porsche 918 Spyder
• 2015 Porsche Cayman GTS
• 2015 Porsche Macan Turbo

As always, this DLC will be available only for the Xbox One version of the game.

Forza Motorsport 6 is slated to launch later this year. It is going to be shown off at Microsoft’s E3 conference next week. Stay tuned.

If you’ve been waiting on jumping on that next generation train (in which case, why? All three consoles have gotten multiple sales and bundles at this point), then maybe here is something that will push you over. If you live in the UK, you can get your hands on the Xbox One, a copy of CD Projekt RED’s just released and excellent The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Microsoft and Playground Games’ own Forza Horizon 2, all for just £279.99.

It’s a great deal, especially since you will get, and continue to get, every major third party game of the generation on the Xbox One. It also has a very nice in built library of exclusives already, such as Sunset Overdrive, Titanfall, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Forza Horizon 2, and Killer Instinct, with more on the way, such as Quantum Break, Forza 6, Halo 5, Scalebound, and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Head on over to SimplyGames if you want to cash in on the deal.

The recent stand-alone expansion pack for Forza Horizon 2 which contained ten vehicles from the film Furious 7 may have been free till April 10th but you can also pick up a pack of eight cars from the same film today.

The cars include the 1970 Dodge Charger R/T, 1970 Plymouth Cuda, 2013 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, 2014 Maserati Ghibli S, 1970 Plymouth Road Runner, 2015 Dodge Charger R/T, 2015 Dodge Challenger and the 1998 Toyota Supra ( which also happens to be the free car for this month)

The Furious 7 Car Pack is interesting because it retails for $5 and includes the same cars you’d see in the expansion. Perhaps the difference this time is that you don’t have to complete challenges to earn them? Regardless, this will be the only way to pick up these cars once the expansion’s free offer ends.

Interested in any of these vehicles? Let us know your thoughts on the car pack in the comments below and stay tuned for more details.

Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 2 has some pretty good discounts on this week’s Deals With Gold on Xbox Live. These discounts are only for Xbox Live Gold subscribers though.

Forza Horizon 2 is the only Xbox One game that’s been discounted this week but there’s a wide variety of discounts to choose from. You can pick up the Digital Edition at a 20 percent discount, the Car Pass for 50 percent off, the Deluxe Edition for 30 percent off and the Ultimate Edition of the game for #0 percent off. The discounts will be valid till April 13th.

Xbox 360 games do have a decent range of discounts to choose from include Serious 3: BFE (67 percent off), Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter (67 percent off), F1 2014 (50 percent off), Naruto Storm Revolution (50 percent off) and many more. Some of these discounts are available to Silver members so that’s a plus.

What are your thoughts on this week’s Deals With Gold? Let us know in the comments.