[Steam] Forza Horizon 5 and Forza Motorsport -65% for FH4 owners (-50% otherwise)

Interesting.
btw I can confirm what you deduced earlier: The price in the store shows 65% as well off for me because I already own FH4 Ultimate

Thanks! For some reason I was assuming, the Car Pass at least had all the car packs. Of course it doesn't. I'll wait for the Ultimate Edition. ^^

treasure map and all car packs released after game were never part of any editions, but it includes both dlc with new areas

Those DLCs came much later after the game being released. You can't expect DLC content for a game that was not mentioned at release, to be included with the premium edition, which was released at launch. This is just a case of doing bad research before buying. Yes, things could be explained better in the store page but corporations aren't going to make things easier on you.

There are games out there that have more than 1 season pass, the idea is the first season pass being included in the premium package, the stuff you get after is additional content. This game is no different, the only difference is that they do not make a 2nd season pass, they release standlone car packs, which are more expensive than the previous DLC. Sometimes the car packs can have cars of your interest, but is it really worth buying a car pack for 5-10 bucks just to get 1 car? When the game has like 900 cars already, 800+ of which are accessible with the premium edition.

The good thing here is that it is all car packs, you can live without them. You don't really need those cars to play and enjoy the game. You already have a crap ton of cars in the game to mess around with. If those DLC packs were map expansions or the likes, then it would be bad for the consumer. Playable areas are more important than having extra cars to mess around with. In this game you have the freedom of modding/tuning cars to absurd lengths, you can make them drift cars, circuit cars, sprint cars, rally/mud cars, hill climb cars, road cars, snow/ice cars, drag cars, minigame cars, random tunes that can break the game. You can grab an old VW beetle and turn it into a sprint monster to compete with brand new exotic cars, or an old fiat 500 and turn it into a small circuit agile beast.

The treasure map is never included in the premium edition, it is an alternative purchase for people not wanting to explore all the secrets in the game. Essentially this is paying to cheat by revealing almost everything in the map. Question here is, would you really want to cut short your exploration? The idea of the game is to free roam the map, explore all the roads, every corner, every mountain and so on, find the stuff that is hidden and try to unlock them. This dlc reveals all the bonus boards and barn finds. Barn finds have an intended mechanic in the game where they show you an area and you have to drive around to find the barn, if you had this dlc included, you would be skipping this mechanic automatically as the barn is instantly pinned on your map the moment you unlock it via game progression. This in the end would ruin the experience to players.

It's not "season pass", it's called "car pass", which implies getting all cars.

What Microsoft is doing here is nothing new to the gaming industry.

So we can agree that "the gaming industry" is rotten in general. If you're going to keep releasing DLCs then just call the editions properly. Yes, it's possible, example: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1465360/SnowRunner/ - they did Year 1 Pass, Year 1 Edition etc. Not misleading people into thinking that it will comprise every expansion and dlc. Some games did an early mistake of selling a "Gold" edition (ETS2, Civ5) but later adding more DLCs. But at least they renamed the packages and when they (Civ5) released Ultimate Edition, it contained everything, unlike FH4 "Ultimate" Edition. Words have meaning and no one will start rewriting dictionaries because corpos decided to mislead people using these words.

If people buy premium editions without doing research nowadays,

... then it means they are perfectly normal people who expect the other side of the transaction to behave decently.

yeah, the 20+ hours might be a proble. the -65% shows if you own FH4 and goes back to -50% if you already have the FH5 Premium edition.

That's because you already own it.

I'm not so sure there will ever be an ultimate edition. FH4 at the time of unlisting had 8 DLCs that were not a part of any package and consequently I ended up missing them as well:
Forza Horizon 4: Hot Wheels™ Legends Car Pack
Forza Horizon 4 Open Top Car Pack
Forza Horizon 4 Japanese Heroes Car Pack
Forza Horizon 4: British Sports Car Car Pack
Forza Horizon 4: Any Terrain Car Pack
Forza Horizon 4: High Performance Car Pack
Forza Horizon 4: Icons Car Pack
Forza Horizon 4: Treasure Map

BTW, what I bought was ironically Forza Horizon 4 Ultimate Edition ;-)

There is no ultimate edition that includes all dlc for FH5. They usually make an edition that includes the first 2 years of content (car pass + 2 expansions). If you want to get all the car packs that are sold separately, then your best bet is to buy FH5 when they want to remove the game from storefronts. This is the best price you will find on all content. Do keep in mind that forza games are considered live service, specially the horizon ones. Joining late, means you will always miss out on something, in this case, they have weekly events with rewards associated (cosmetics, cars, money, horns...). I am fairly certain some of these rewards are going to be locked away when the game ceases to have more weekly events. This usually occurs when the next FH game drops. FM games follow a similar pattern, i don't know about this last one, but FM7 used the same formula to some extent.

FH4 did have an ultimate edition, they renamed it this time around and i believe the reason for them renaming the packages is to future proof from potential problems when they decide to extend the licensing of the game for 2 more years. I believe this is the main reason FH5 does not have an ultimate edition, because of the FH4 2 year extension.

All forza games have taken 4 years to release in general, FH4 had extra shelf life because FH5 took longer to come out. FH5 will also have extra shelf life probably because FH6 was not mentioned anywhere on xbox showcase this month, which means, it will be another 2 years of FH5. Which means 4 years + 2 extra, 6 in total (2021->2027), deadline for FH5 is 2027 Q4, FM is on the same page, this game will most likely have 4 years (2023->2027).

The pricing on FM costing more is due to base price being higher. The premium edition bundles are priced equally, but the base games are priced 5€ apart for my country, so i assume it is the same everywhere, more or less.

FH and FM feel about the same gameplay wise, you might see some differences in the physics of each game, like when you collide with another car on track, on FM it feels heavier but on FH it's more unrealistic. Both games use the same engine usually. FM could be using some additional improvements that FH5 lacks. FM is the one forza game showcasing the new game engine basically.

PS: That's a lot of FMs and FHs!

I forgot about the PlayStation port. In that case I doubt FH5 will get delisted for another 2 years at least. These games only really drop down to like 65% off before the final 80% off delisting discount so I feel like if you're not willing to wait years for it to be delisted, 65% off might be as good as it gets