Forza Horizon 5's Horizon Arcade feature is, on paper, an exciting idea. Horizon Arcade events are within the open world, allowing players to cooperatively complete escalating challenges. It's exactly the kind of feature that Forza Horizon 5 is built to offer. Yet, somehow, of all Forza Horizon 5's many game modes and activities, Horizon Arcade is one of the few that's worked out the worst. Players within the Forza Horizon 5 community are already pushing Playground Games to make changes.
The Forza Horizon subreddit has many different topics posted regarding Horizon Arcade since launch, but the days since Playground's hotfix have created a new surge of activity. The most popular post is a simple enough message, with a headline reading "Horizon 5 arcades right now" attached to a gif of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air looking around an empty room. This is the most common sentiment surrounding Horizon Arcade. Players believe that no one is participating in the event.
Other posts on the Forza Horizon subreddit delve into some of the reasons why players think Horizon Arcade isn't working out well. Theories include that participation in Horizon Arcade doesn't provide enough rewards, particularly since events so often fail halfway through. A bigger recommendation is altering Horizon Arcade to scale with the number of players participating in each event, so that they can be completed regardless of how many people are involved.
People aren't doing Arcades. You (PG games) need to start offering better rewards for them or scale them. from ForzaHorizon
As should be clear, there's no one obvious solution to the problem with Horizon Arcade because no one's sure what exactly the problem is. At skin depth, it looks like not enough players are participating in events. However, it could be deeper than that. Forza Horizon 5 could be having problems with matchmaking or spawning other players in for events. It could be having technical issues keeping players matched together through the course of a full Horizon Arcade event. In other words, It's possible Playground could fix this issue with patches.
In the recent Forza Horizon 5 update, Playground does mention some notable fixes. It says "improvements" were made to Horizon Arcade for "other player visibility" as well as "joining and leaving arcade events." Of course, there remains a notable unresolved issue within Playground's frequently updated list of problems, too, that says Horizon Arcade events are starting "without a full group" or with "too small of a group" of players.
Playground is, at the very least, aware of the issues regarding Horizon Arcade. If the answer to those issues was simple, it'd likely be fixed by now. It's just a shame that Horizon Arcade is part of the weekly seasonal objectives, because players are constantly reminded of how difficult it is to complete a Horizon Arcade event each time they open up the Festival menu. Expect updates on this problem from Playground in the weeks, or potentially months, to come.
Forza Horizon 5 is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.