Forza Horizon 5 Celebrates 10 Million Players, Biggest Launch In Xbox History

It does seem like with the help of Game Pass and all the games being on PC that Xbox IPs are finally getting the attention they deserve. The Forza Horizon games have always been so freaking good but it took five games before the series finally reached a wide appeal. Now I'm curious to see how other upcoming Xbox Game Studios titles will be received, such as the Halo Infinite campaign. I mean, for the longest time ever, Xbox IPs haven't had a wide appeal in general in comparison to Nintendo and PlayStation franchises. Like whenever Nintendo or Sony releases a game, tons of people will get it because they know it will always be good. The brands simply hold a high status that anything they release will be compelling to a lot of people. I want that to happen with Xbox because their IPs have been so under-appreciated ever since the beginning, again when compared to Nintendo or PlayStation. So hopefully Forza Horizon 5 is the start of something good for the Xbox brand.

@LtSarge yea I mean the other Horizon games are such good quality. I jumped back into 4 last night for an hour to get some achievements and it just plays so well as well! I hope these millions go and check out the past games (despite their delistings!).

This is so good for Xbox Game Studios. They must be hyped!

Finally, Xbox games are getting the attention they deserve. I think that something similar is going to happen with Halo Infinite and, of course, with future Xbox games: Starfield, The Elder Scrolls, Perfect Dark, Fable, Avowed...

@K1LLEGAL Yeah it's definitely a bummer that previous Horizon games have been delisted as I'm sure there are people who discovered this series with the fifth game and want to play the previous ones now. Imagine if Game Pass had access to all five Forza Horizon games, that would be awesome! But alas, licensing and all that..

I’ve already played this one more than any other. It’s a great game to just relax and play.

Anyone else feel that the world in 5 is a bit soulless?

4 had more traffic on the roads and although it wasn't much, it made the world feel a bit more alive. In 5, there are parts that seem totally devoid of life, and the cities/towns are pretty looking husks.

I’m deliberately pacing myself (no pun intended) with this game. Enjoyable as it is, I mostly just play single player races. The fact that yet again Playground games haven’t included championships (barring the seasonal ones) means the mileage I get from this game is probably limited. Needless to say, I’m holding back on blitzing through everything.

@LtSarge
I've more or less abandoned Nintendo after supporting them for over 20 years. Think they become complainant recently. The switch has many shovelware titles and has been like this for quite a long time. I know they have their big exclusives but it's not enough . I have returned to Xbox for the last 18 months and I am having the best time for ages.
The xbox IP's are absolutely fantastic and deserve far more recognition. I cannot believe Forza Horizon 5 didn't get GOTY nominated. The future for XBOX looks amazing for me!
And Gamepass and Gold is no brainer despite its critics elsewhere.

@LtSarge Horizon 4 another beatiful game, is there in gamepass, and the ultimate version is dirt cheap now in the black friday sale, but yeah the others are delisted cause of licensing issues... Got Horizon 4 with my One X with the Lego expansion (which is great btw).

Congratulations to Playground games, Can't wait to see Fable..

I recently got all the Forza games I didn’t have digitally that play on series x pretty cheap from second hand shops. I’m really in love with the original especially.

Just looking at my achievements and 78% of people have the very first achievement of pretty much starting the game, what the hell are 1.2 million people doing? Or is this 10 million just the times its been downloaded but not necessarily played

I love the game, and that's saying a lot cause im not usually into driving games. That being said, I was never able to race against other people. It searches for races for a while and never finds one.
Am i the only one with this issue?

@UltimateOtaku91
10M is the number of people that have completed the opening segment, who then are registered as part of the player count for the Hall of Fame.
You can check the real-time total player count through that in game.

To put the 10M into perspective;
Forza Horizon 3 took 2 years to reach 10m players
Forza Horizon 4 took 9 months to reach 10m players
Forza Horizon 5 took 1 week to reach 10m players

The power of a high quality game and increased accessibility through Game Pass for console, PC and Cloud.

@blinx01 I'm by no means saying 10 million is bad as it's a pretty darn good achievement, just thought how can only 78% of players have the first achievement which you get by playing the first 10 minutes

@UltimateOtaku91 might be because it's on Steam aswell

@UltimateOtaku91
@Would_you_kindly
That's a good point.
I've not played an Xbox game on Steam, but I'd assume you'd just get the Steam achievements rather than actual Xbox achievements?

@Eleventy8 What system are you playing on? Its been said that Series Consoles have more as its part of the scaling but 'difficult' to actually quantify because of the dynamic nature of the game. The map itself too is much larger so maybe has similar numbers of random cars just spread out more.

Its great that this franchise is getting the credit and players are now able to even try it via Game Pass to see how much 'fun' it is. Looks like MS is finishing 2021 very strongly and leading us nicely into 2022 which is also looking 'strong' too - Stalker 2, Redfall, Starfield etc...

@BAMozzy I’m on Series X and S

Booted up Horizon 4 this morning and as soon as I drove out of the Ambleside house, transit van coming up the road. Map feels more alive.

Still early doors on Horizon 5, but it seems vast areas on the map are empty.

@blinx01 I don't really use steam so I didn't even know it had achievements

@LtSarge agree with this. Gamepass is really pushing the brand to wider appeal. Good to see the variety across platforms too.