A Microsoft account is required to play Forza Horizon 5 on the PS5.

Forza Horizon 5 players will require a Microsoft account to play the racer on PS5.

On launch of the game, you’ll be asked to sign in with your Microsoft account – “sometimes referred to as the Xbox Live services that are a part of your Microsoft account” – and link it to your PlayStation Network account.

According to the official Forza website, linking a Microsoft account to a PSN account is on a “title-by-title basis and permanent”.

“Players have the ability to unlink the Microsoft account to that PSN account, for Forza Horizon 5, but will be constrained to relinking to only that specific and originally linked, Microsoft account,” it explains (thanks, Push Square).

You’ll also require a PlayStation Plus subscription, too, to access online multiplayer features, but solo and offline play is available regardless of whether or not you have a PSN account.

According to Does It Play – a group dedicated to the preservation of video games and their respective systems – this addition of a Microsoft account “basically kills preservation for the PS5 version of Forza Horizon 5”.

Forza Horizon 5 is coming to Sony’s console on 25th April 2025, and new content for all platforms is also on the way. It originally released back in 2021, taking the acclaimed open-world racing series to Mexico. Eurogamer called it “another gorgeous and enveloping pocket holiday” in our Recommended review, highlighting its racing’s “enviable tightrope-walk between structure and player freedom”.

Forza Horizon 5’s leap to PS5 comes after Microsoft confirmed its new multi-console release strategy and follows the jump of other “exclusive” Xbox franchises like Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, and Pentiment on PlayStation, with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Doom: The Dark Ages, and The Outer Worlds 2 on the way.