The latest title in the Forza Horizon series, Forza Horizon 5, has seen players flocking to it in almost unprecedented numbers — to the tune of a million new players every day since it launched.
Between 1200 UTC on Friday November 5, when the game first became available to Premium Edition players in (and “in”) New Zealand, and 1200 UTC on Friday November 12, just over 6.7 million new players have visited the Horizon Festival, according to the in-game ranking boards.
Even accounting for the player accounts — influencers, media, and the game’s developers — that had access before the official launch date, that still means close to one million new players each and every day across the game’s life.
It’s not exactly done there either. In the time it’s taken to write the last two paragraphs, another 600 players have appeared on the leaderboards. That’s a rate equivalent to around 450,000 new user accounts playing FH5 today, though this two-minute snapshot while North America is largely asleep may well underplay the increase.
Of course much of this activity isn’t down to either physical or digital sales of the game, rather its appearance on Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service.
For those unfamiliar with Game Pass, it’s a subscription service which gives you free access to hundreds of titles without any additional purchase. Coming in at $9.99 (£7.99/€9.99) a month, the service includes all of the latest Microsoft Studios games — including Forza Horizon 5 — as well as EA Play titles. There’s even a $1 (£1/€1) introductory month, of which no doubt plenty of players will be taking advantage right now.
However sales have been no less robust either. During the first four days, when only players who had purchased the Premium Edition could play, the leaderboards recorded more than a million accounts.
For a quick comparison, that means that FH5’s early access alone outstripped FH4’s entire first full week on sale, and FH5 will reach the seven million mark in seven days compared to FH4’s positively sluggish 113 days.
Across its first year, Forza Horizon 4 reached around 12 million players. Its successor looks set to blow clean past that figure, and pretty soon at that.
If you’re one of the apparently very few people who hasn’t tried FH5 yet, it’s available now on Xbox One and Series consoles, and through Windows and Steam on PC, as well as Xbox Game Pass.
Featured image courtesy of turk1993.
