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Halo Infinite Tops 20 Million Players, Forza Horizon 5 is Over 18 Million Players

Halo Infinite Tops 20 Million Players, Forza Horizon 5 is Over 18 Million Players - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 25 January 2022 / 3,468 Views

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in the earnings call to investors has revealed Halo Infinite has surpassed 20 million players worldwide, "making it the biggest Halo launch in our history."

Nadella also revealed that Forza Horizon 5 has surpassed 18 million players worldwide. 

The official Halo Twitter account has reiterated what Nadella said by saying "With over 20 million Spartans joining us so far, we’re thrilled to announce that Halo Infinite is the biggest launch in Halo franchise history!

"Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the next step in this great journey."


A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.


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23 Comments
aTokenYeti (on 25 January 2022)

Incredible numbers for both

  • +12
scrapking aTokenYeti (on 25 January 2022)

The rate of uptake for Forza Horizon 5 is stunning, given it took.... what, two years for Horizon 4 to hit 25 million players, and this has hit 18 million players in about 2 months? And both are in Game Pass, so it's not just that.

  • +2
2zosteven (on 25 January 2022)

Both games made the short list for game of the year, no surprise.

  • +7
VAMatt (on 26 January 2022)

As a fan of Halo since launch of the original game, I am very happy to see the success of Infinite. They needed a big success to keep Halo in the top tier of video game IPs. I'd say they've definitely taken care of that business..

  • +5
KLAMarine VAMatt (on 26 January 2022)

Master Chief in Smash needs to happen next.

  • +3
2zosteven VAMatt (on 26 January 2022)

need to get more consoles released so they can sell even more

  • 0
chakkra (on 25 January 2022)

I think this proves that Forza Horizon is actually Microsoft's biggest IP at the moment.

  • +4
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Otter (on 26 January 2022)

Forza 5 doing amazing things. First time I've wanted to play racing game since Motostorm

  • +2
Azzanation (on 25 January 2022)

But Halo was a dead franchise they said..
Good numbers and well deserved.

  • +2
Mr Puggsly (on 27 January 2022)

Impressive, I honestly thought Forza may have eclipsed Halo in the number of players. But Halo is still going strong, nice to see.

I personally have gotten kinda bored of Forza Horizon, the open world formula every other year is too much for me. But its certainly the best at what it does.

  • +1
hellobion2 (on 25 November 2023)

Good article!

  • 0
LivncA_Dis3 (on 26 January 2022)

Halo is free to play so those numbers are easily bolstered,

Imagine 20 million sales though and 18 million sales no gamepass shenanigans

  • 0
BINARYGOD LivncA_Dis3 (on 23 January 2023)

"shenanigans" but then you must also quickly run to any thread talking about any other FTP or pseudo FTP game and make quick disclaimers. Wouldnt want you to be inconsistent, now.

  • +2
Pemalite (on 25 January 2022)

Well deserved. These are Halo 3 levels of numbers I think?

  • 0
aTokenYeti Pemalite (on 25 January 2022)

They said it was the largest halo launch ever so it exceeded halo 3 numbers, of course with the obvious caveat that the multiplayer is free and also launched same day on PC instead of 1 console

  • +5
Kakadu18 Pemalite (on 25 January 2022)

I don't think Halo 3 ever reached 20mil units sold.

  • 0
Azzanation Kakadu18 (on 25 January 2022)

Yeah i think its sitting on around 12m or something along the lines. Halo Infinite also has a free to play multiplayer which would have boosted player counts immensely.

  • +3
Otter Kakadu18 (on 26 January 2022)

Players will always be more than actual sales units by a fair bit. On one 360 we had 4 different live accounts at my house

  • 0
aTokenYeti Otter (on 26 January 2022)

This is misunderstanding what is meant by “players” in this announcement. It does not count guest accounts or people that picked up a controller and played once. The second one in particular is not in any way measurable.

The “players” here means unique Microsoft accounts that either downloaded the game, bought the game, or installed it via game disc.

  • +3
Otter aTokenYeti (on 26 January 2022)

Fair, I thought that every unique live account that would login to a game counts as a player. The point remains that it'll be less than units.

  • 0
BINARYGOD Otter (on 23 January 2023)

whatever metric they are using is the same as the ones they use for invstors (they make the same claims in both cases), so its not fluff or inaccurate in the way that some are want to beleive.

  • +1
BINARYGOD Otter (on 23 January 2023)

PS - with the way MS states it, its not going to be different enough statistically vs sales of discs, because as you might know, a disc is also not a unique player and never was (and no one actually beleives it to be)

BTW, I might be misreading your point, and I am sorry if that is the case - an extra glass of wine and also, I am use to people complaining about certain things on the internet, so I have so assumptions I likely throw out too quickly.

EDIT - or I am replying to the wrong user again - kek

  • 0