Forza Horizon 5 has set yet another record with 15 million players who have now enjoyed the latest game in the series. The new record has been set just two months after the game was initially released. That’s an incredibly impressive amount of players in such a short time frame. For reference, Forza Horizon 4 was considered extremely successful after getting seven million players in around three months.
Both Forza Horizon games launched day one on Game Pass, meaning subscribers could try out the games as part of their subscriptions. However, Game Pass has significantly more subscribers than it did when Forza Horizon 4 was released in 2018. Regardless, 15 million players is an incredibly impressive number for Forza Horizon 5 to reach in such a short amount of time. If Forza Horizon 5 had sold 15 million copies, it would be the best-selling Xbox One game of all time with a 5 million lead over Forza Horizon 4, which is currently the number one selling Xbox One game with 10 million sold. It’s not clear yet what the split is between Game Pass players and gamers who purchased the game. We’ll surely get more sales information in the coming months.
In terms of engagement, it’s clear that Game Pass is really working for both Microsoft and Xbox gamers. It’s incredibly rare for a AAA game to receive such massive levels of interest and participation from gamers. Forza Horizon 5’s success is also a testament to Microsoft’s cross-platform strategy with all of its first-party games. Almost all first-party Microsoft games have been released at the same time on Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC. This massively increases the potential audience for the company’s games. Compare Forza Horizon 5’s success to the sales of PS5 exclusive Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, which sold 1.1 million copies, and the results are clear. Game Pass and releasing on three platforms has given Forza Horizon 5 the best possible platform for success.
