Forza Horizon 5 was released just yesterday, November 9, but it’s already off to a record start. Xbox head Phil Spencer announced on Twitter that the open-world racing game already crossed 4.5M players across Xbox, PC, and Xbox Cloud gaming, making it the largest launch day for a first-party game.
It really helps that Forza Horizon 5 launched day one on Xbox Game Pass, but so did Forza Horizon 4 three years ago. According to Spencer, the peak concurrent players number in Forza Horizon 5 is currently 3x higher than the one from Forza Horizon 4, which is definitely impressive.
We've invested for years in Xbox so more people can play. With 4.5+ million players so far across PC, cloud & console, Forza Horizon 5 shows that promise coming to life. Largest launch day for XGS game, peak concurrent 3x FH4 high. Thank you players & congrats to @WeArePlayground
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) November 10, 2021
Forza Horizon 5 was one of the most anticipated blockbusters of the holiday season, and PlayGround Games’ latest game once again received critical acclaim. Forza Horizon 5 features some of the prettiest graphics you can experience on Xbox Series X today, and it’s a great casual game you can also play on your phone or tablet thanks to Xbox Cloud Gaming.
While Forza Horizon 5’s performance just raised the bar for Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios division, Halo Infinite may well have another record-breaking release next month. The game is set to launch on Xbox, PC, and Xbox Game Pass on December 8, and the game’s multiplayer mode will be entirely free-to-play. Xbox’s marketing machine is just getting started, and we expect to see even more of Halo Infinite on November 15 during Microsoft’s special event celebrating 20 years of Xbox and Halo.
