Following the surprise launch of the Halo Infinite multiplayer mode earlier this week, Microsoft’s Xbox division is currently on a roll. Forza Horizon 5, one of the most critically-acclaimed games of the year so far has just broken a new record for Xbox.
With over 10 million players on Xbox and PC during its first week, Forza Horizon 5 just had the biggest game launch in the history of Xbox and Xbox Game Pass. This is pretty impressive for a racing game, and it will be interesting to see if Halo Infinite can top that in the coming days.
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
Forza Horizon 5 was officially released on Xbox, PC, and Xbox Game Pass on November 9, but players who purchased the game’s Premium Add-ons bundle gained early access since November 5. Microsoft previously announced 4.5 million players on November 10, just one day after the game launched, and over 5.5 new players have since started playing the game over the past nine days.
In many ways, Forza Horizon 5 is the perfect game to promote Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service: It has a beautifully-designed open world with solid performance even on old Xbox One consoles, and it’s also accessible enough for casual gamers. The game is also playable on phones and tablets via Xbox Cloud Gaming, and the season changes every Thursday are a great incentive to come back to the Mexican open-world every week.
If you haven’t read it yet, you can check out our extensive Forza Horizon 5 review on this page. This is a fantastic release for Xbox and developer PlayGround Games, and one of the best games you can play today on Xbox Series X and Series S consoles.
