Forza Horizon 5 Tops 35 Million Players - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 08 December 2023 / 9,364 Views
The open-world racing game, Forza Horizon 5, has surpassed 32 million players, according to the Hall of Fame leaderboard in the game itself. This was spotted by Twitter user MauroNL.
The open-world racing game had topped 32 million players in August 2023, 30 million players in May 2023, 20 million players in June 2022, 15 million players in January 2021, and over 10 million players in its launch week.
Forza Horizon 5 released for the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, and Xbox Game Pass on November 9, 2021. The Hot Wheels expansion released on July 19, 2022 and the Rally Adventure released on March 29, 2023.
The latest entry in the Forza series, Forza Motorsport, released for the Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Game Pass on October 10.
Forza Horizon 5 has now surpassed 35 million players since launch.
— MauroNL (@MauroNL3) December 8, 2023
This is up 5 million since May 2023 when it reached 30 million players total.
Forza Horizon 5 launched on November 1, 2021 on PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. pic.twitter.com/5XQMY9BAoF
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Great game. Hopefully the next one is just as great
But how many in sales?!?!? Until this vital information is provided, this game cannot, under any circumstances, be considered a success!
Fr though, huge congrats! It’s insane how much this game, and franchise, continues to grow.
This is a huge success. First there is no way all Game Pass Subs are going to play this game. If we assume there's 30 million currently then lets assume 20 million played the game. That leaves roughly 15 million in sales (subtracting used game sales). Obviously this just a guess, but based on the information we know the game did indeed sell at minimum 10 million. On top of that there's the DLC sales which Game Pass subs do have to pay for just like everyone else. Forza Horizon 5 is by far Microsoft's best performing game this generation (outside of Minecraft).
There is one massive issue with this type of analysis, the gamepass number might stay constant at 25-30m but it absolutely isn’t just the same 25-30m people one month to the next, let alone from 2 years ago. There will be a constant churn of subscribers, people coming and going at a pretty high rate. People subscribing for a month here or there to play a game they particularly want, or long term subs letting it lapse for a break. People using the free trial period and then never subscribing after that etc.
Over the last 2 years I’d image the number of unique Gamepass accounts is probably closer to 50m over Xbox/PC/Cloud.
For actual sales numbers it’s incredibly hard to say. I do recall that FH5 never made the top 20 games in either Europe or NA in 2021(launch year). That puts it’s first year sales at a fairly low number but it’s very likely had good legs, at least on Steam it has.
Edit: FH5 was actually the 20th best selling game in the USA in 2021
Oh FH5 also had a free to play weekend on Steam.
Not only that but for sure a lot of people had it on the console with GP with more than one account on it playing the game.
I don't think it closed 10M sales, maybe 5-10M sales.
Not only has it easily sold over 10 million copies by now over 2 million people bought the Ultimate Edition of the game and played it via early access and I would know since I was one of the 2 million people who played it that way and saw over 2 million entries on the main leaderboard before the game officially launched. Also Game Pass cannot be shared by accounts and neither can early access.
You can play the early access on Gamepass by just paying for the deluxe edition upgrade, you don’t need to buy the full game.
I played Starfield early access by buying the upgrade with MS reward points.
Selling over 10m would be like 3M+ per year and again, it was the 20th best selling game in 2021 in NA and not in the top 20 in Europe. It was not in the top 20 in 2022 and likely nowhere near it, same for 2023. Those charts are digital + Physical and include PC so it’s really hard to see how it could sell at such a rate without ever seriously charting except at launch.
Name any game that’s sold 10m copies in 2 years and see where it charts.
Miles Morales sold at a similar rate and that game was the 6th highest selling game on the NPD during its second year, and was still consistently making the top 20 for 24 months.
Nope, you are forgetting this game released in 2021 and early access like that was not available for it you had to buy the whole Ultimate Edition to get early access and again I would know since bought the Ultimate Edition and played it through early access.
No, you could pay to upgrade and play on gamepass, this is 100% a fact. It was the first gamepass game to have this option.
Nope, you are 100% wrong about that one. Starfield was the first game to have that option.
Here is the actual FH5 FAQ from 2 years ago:
Q: When is the release date for Forza Horizon 5?
A: The Forza Horizon 5 Standard Digital/Disk and Deluxe Digital Editions release on November 9th, 2021.
The Forza Horizon 5 Premium Edition Early Access begins on November 5th, 2021 for all platforms. Early Access begins on November 5th, 2021 for Xbox Game Pass members, Standard Digital or Deluxe Digital Edition owners as part of the Premium Add-Ons Bundle for separate purchase on Xbox and Windows.
Description
GAME PASS MEMBERS get all the EXTRA CONTENT included with the Premium Edition at one low price!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-is/p/forza-horizon-5-premium-add-ons-bundle/9mz0sr207mg8?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
Not a peep from you before about this game, i wonder why?
The hell are you talking about? lol. I’ve commented on MULTIPLE articles tied to this game. I’ve also played FH since the franchise started. Haven’t played this last iteration because I just don’t have the time these days to play everything like I used to. Still great to see how huge this sub-franchise is. Definitely surpassing the main series. Just take off that tin foil off your head!
Awesome numbers
The speed it is gaining is impressive for sure. The final official playercount number for Forza Horizon 4 was 24m in 2020, 2.2 years after it had released, while in-game leaderboard tracking showed it had passed 30m lifetime last I checked. Horizon 5 by comparison has now hit 35m in just over 2 years, a whole 11m more players in roughly the same timeframe it took Horizon 4 to hit 24m. At the rate it is gaining, lifetime for Horizon 5 should be well over 40m players, it has gained 3m players in the last 4 months.
Really looking forward to Horizon 6, should release in 2024 assuming it gets 3 years of development like Horizon 5 did (Horizon 4 was the first in the series to get 3 years of development, before that all entries got 2 years of development).
My guess is that it launches in 2025. I don't have any evidence other than my intuition, but my thinking is that they will do a Forza Horizon, then a big deal DLC, then Motorsport, then a big DLC, then a Forza horizon, etc. So, a 4 year cycle.
The GamePass effect
