Forza Horizon 5, the prodigious open world racing game from Playground Games and Xbox Game Studios isn’t just one of the most impressive and critically acclaimed (the game received a perfect 10 score from IGN and boasts an 92% rating on Metacritic) new Xbox exclusive games players can experience on the Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One before the new year hits — it’s also racing past records, with Playground confirming on Thursday that Forza Horizon 5 had the biggest launch in Xbox and Xbox Game Pass history as it surpassed 10 million players just 10 days after its release.
Thank you to the more than 10M #ForzaHorizon5 fans for the biggest first week in @Xbox history and @XboxGamePass EVER. GG! pic.twitter.com/WXZawEvBkO
— Forza Horizon (@ForzaHorizon) November 19, 2021
The news that Forza Horizon 5 had the biggest launch in Xbox history comes a week after Xbox head Phil Spencer revealed on his Twitter that the game had what he described as the “largest launch day” in the history of Xbox Game Studios, tracking much higher than the previous installment Forza Horizon 4 had on its launch day.
“We’ve invested for years in Xbox so more people can play,” Spencer said in the tweet. “With 4.5+ million players so far across PC, cloud & console, Forza Horizon 5 shows that promise coming to life.
“Largest launch day for [an Xbox Game Studios] game, peak concurrent [players] 3x [Forza Horizon 4’s] high. Thank you players, and congrats to [Playground Games].”
Playground Games
Forza Horizon 5 officially launched on November 9th, but already boasted more than 1.2 million players on PC and Xbox thanks to an Early Access feature in the Forza Horizon 5 Premium Pack, which allowed some players to start their engines and begin playing the game four days early on November 5th.
Forza Horizon 5 takes place in Mexico, a setting which Playground Games’ creative director Mike Brown described as “the most diverse open-world yet in a Horizon game” with such geographically diverse features as “living deserts, lush jungles, historic cities, hidden ruins, pristine beaches, vast canyons, and a towering snow-capped volcano – the highest point ever in a Horizon game.” It’s also installment in the series to introduce regional weather variations and storms which affects the conditions of the tracks on which players race.
Are you surprised that Forza Horizon 5 had the biggest launch in Xbox history? Sound off in the comments.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login