Alongside franchises like Halo and Gears of War, Forza is a staple series both Xbox owners and gearheads can look forward to every year or so. The series did not release a new, mainline entry since 2018's Forza Horizon 4 due to both the pandemic and the release of the Xbox Series X/S. However, it is back with Forza Horizon 5 and Xbox head Phil Spencer is touting the almost immediate success the game has seen.
Forza Horizon 5 is the fifth entry in the Forza Horizon series and the twelth mainline release for the Forza franchise, which typically alternates between the Horizon and Motorsport sub-series. The game sees the titular car and music festival trade in the English countryside from Forza Horizon 4 for the exotic locales of Mexico, from sun-soaked beaches to ancient Mayan temples to explore in some of the world's best cars. Series developer Playground Games touted the map as the largest it has ever created for a Horizon game along with its new dynamic weather system.
That said, Spencer's focus on Twitter was to highlight the almost instantaneous launch day success Forza Horizon 5 experienced. The Xbox head said in his November 9 post the game had already surpassed 4.5 million players "across PC, cloud, and console" and peak concurrent players was 3x higher than Forza Horizon 4 at the same point. He followed by saying it was the largest Xbox Games Studios launch day release and thanked both players and Playground Games for its success.
Forza Horizon 5's initial success can, in one way, be seen as reflecting a player base hungry for a new Forza after an almost three-year wait. As mentioned above, Forza Horizon 4 was the last in Playground and Turn 10 Studio's annual release streak which started with 2011's Forza Motorsport 4. This allowed Forza to be a constant on Xbox consoles while also catering to both simulator players and arcade players with the annual, alternating releases. It is worth asking, too, how much the growth of Xbox Game Pass played in helping expose PC and Xbox players to the game.
An October 2021 report said the alleged Game Pass subscriber count was between 25 and 30 million, marking one of the biggest periods of growth for the streaming platform. A major selling point for it has been day one availability for Xbox exclusives since the change was introduced in 2018. It's possible the platform could see large, ongoing growth on the back of Forza Horizon 5 alongside upcoming exclusives including Halo Infinite.
Forza Horizon 5 is available for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.