Forza Horizon 5 has almost a million players before it’s even out

Forza Horizon 5 cars in the rain — A last minute game of the year contender? (pic: Microsoft)

Despite not technically being out yet, Forza Horizon 5 has at least 800,000 people playing it already.

It’s safe to assume that Forza Horizon 5 is a slam dunk success for Microsoft and developer Playground Games. Aside from receiving near unanimous praise from critics, it’s managed to accrue at least 800,000 players, and it’s not even launched yet.

Technically speaking, Forza Horizon 5 has been available to play since November 5 thanks to early access, which you could get by purchasing the Premium Edition. It’s still an undeniably impressive feat though – as well as in interesting indication of how many people tend to buy the more expensive editions of a game.

The player stats come from Forza Horizon 5’s Hall of Fame leaderboard, with the 800,000 players including both the Xbox versions and the PC.

It’s worth noting that the Premium Edition costs £85, although Xbox Game Pass subscribers can purchase a Premium Add-Ons bundle, which includes early access, for £39.99. So, those player numbers no doubt consist of early adopters who were confident in Forza Horizon 5’s quality and Game Pass subscribers who picked up the good word of mouth and wanted to check the game out early as well.

Assuming at least 800,000 people bought the Premium Edition, that’s £68 million Forza Horizon 5 has made even before it’s out. Although how profitable the game will prove to be depends on how much it cost to make and exactly how Microsoft calculates income from Game Pass.

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Forza Horizon 5 is the highest rated game of 2021 so far, with Psychonauts 2, another Microsoft published game, only a couple of spots below it.

All in all, the next couple of months looks like it will do much to reverse the Xbox’s reputation for not having any high quality first party exclusives, even though only Psychonauts 2 is the result of Microsoft’s recent buying spree of developers.

Aside from Forza Horizon 5’s proper release set to bring in even more players, the company’s next major exclusive, Halo Infinite, is already set to release next month in time for Christmas.

Forza Horizon 5 releases for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on November 9.