Those are just words, they have been saying this for a long time and since then announced games like the Romance Saga 2 that skips xbox...

No Vesperia?  No Berseria?  Those two are my favourites...

I mean, FF14, Octopath Traveler 2 finally getting ported and Visions of Mana even launching on Xbox day one, and going so far as to be featured and interviewed in an Xbox showcase is more than I would just describe as words. If anything it's pretty clear the direction they're heading, and they're just getting started. 

I would say it's just words if it was the continued practice of basically no major SE games making it to Xbox, but they have. 3 just this year alone. There's also still the Dragon's Quest 1-3 HD-2D remakes and Fantasian: Neo Dimension releasing on Xbox too.

Just got done watching the combat in the gameplay trailer and got to say I'm really diggin it.  

It just feels wrong to say this over and over again and then have a game announcement that skips xbox...

That's fair, but we also don't know what deals were made by the current CEOs predecessor. He's only been CEO of Square for a little over a year now. There's only so much he can change in such a short timeframe. Especially in the age where a single game takes years to make, so contracts are signed years in advance. But he clearly has the ambitions of making Square as multiplat as possible. 

Contracts take time to clear, ports take time to make, business directions take time to change, it's pretty damn obvious though that Square Enix is shifting more towards Xbox, a single missing remake does not change that fact, it isn't just words and FF16 is all but guaranteed to come to Xbox at this stage, Romanic Saga 2 Remake...I don't know but I'm sure it will come eventually considering bloody Octopath Traveller 2 and Fantasian have, Lol.

I would think a racing game would be somewhat more demanding. World geometry and texture assets have to be very rapidly pulled in and out of the VRAM due to the high speed of the cars. It's why Starfield still doesn't have in-atmosphere flight and took nearly a year to add ground vehicles, Bethesda really struggled with getting Creation Engine to quickly load and unload assets at high player camera movement speeds. 

I'd say the main issue with the comparison is that Forza Horizon 5 and Avowed are on two different engines, Unreal 5 seems to be alot more demanding than Forza Tech. Also Obsidian have never been anywhere near the front of the developer pack in terms of the technical side of game development, pretty much all of their games over the years have had average graphics at best, and many of them had pretty significant framerate issues. Playground by comparison seem to be in the top 5% of game developers in terms of technology and graphics.