How ‘Forza Horizon 5’ Became The Biggest Xbox Game Ever In Its First Week

Forza Horizon 5 just made Xbox history. It’s become the biggest Xbox game and Xbox Game Pass game of all time in its opening week with a whopping 10 million players.

Microsoft announced the good news on Twitter Thursday:

Forza Horizon 5 takes place in Mexico, and players can play online or solo in the open-world racing game—though I hear load-times for online races can take as long as the abysmally slow matchmaking times in Halo Infinite.

So how did a racing game skyrocket to the top of Xbox’s charts like this? Is it really that good? What’s going on?

The simple answer is Xbox Game Pass, but a better answer is:

Xbox Game Pass + cross-platform / cross-play (on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and PC) + Xbox Cloud Gaming + yes it’s very damn good = major success.

This is Microsoft’s strategy, and it’s a very good one. Xbox isn’t just an Xbox console anymore. Xbox is a platform which, thanks to Game Pass, includes PC and whatever device you’re using to stream an Xbox game via Xbox Cloud Gaming, which Forza Horizon 5 supports.

This combination of accessibility, game streaming, cross-platform and cross-play is the secret weapon that’s currently fueling Xbox and Forza Horizon 5’s success, and while Sony has lots of great games, PlayStation simply doesn’t have anything quite like it.

Forza Horizon 5 proves that Microsoft is onto something, and definitely on the right track as Xbox is transformed from a console into something less hardware-focused and more ubiquitous. That doesn’t mean the box itself is going away, only that Microsoft’s gaming platform is finally starting to realize its potential as something more.

Rewind just a few years and a game like Forza Horizon wasn’t available on so many devices, wasn’t available as part of your Xbox Game Pass subscription, and you certainly weren’t able to purchase on copy on Xbox and also get it on PC. All that’s changed as Xbox and Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming have all begun to come together into one platform.

And that—along with the game’s stellar racing—is why Forza Horizon 5 is such a huge hit.

Have you played Forza Horizon 5 yet? Are you enjoying it? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

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