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Forza Horizon 5 Had 'The Biggest First Week in Xbox History'

Microsoft has confirmed that Forza Horizon 5 has seen the biggest launch of any Xbox title in the history of the company, with 10 million players jumping into Playground Games' beautifully reimagined Mexican landscape within its first week.


In a tweet from the official Forza Horizon Twitter account (below), the company confirmed that it was the biggest launch for a game in Xbox history, obviously meaning it's broken those records for Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Studios games, too.

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

Prior to the announcement, Xbox boss Phil Spencer also recently revealed that the game had experienced the largest launch day of any Xbox Game Studios game ever. The open-world racing game amassed over 4.5 million players in its launch week where it also featured peak concurrent player count heights over three times the size of its predecessor Forza Horizon 4.


As with all Xbox Game Studios games, Forza Horizon 5 was released into Xbox's popular subscription service Xbox Game Pass, meaning that subscribers could gain access to the game at no additional cost from day one.

While some have questioned the financial viability of a service like Game Pass, Spencer recently explained that the platform is proving to be "very, very sustainable." That news will likely please those currently signed up to the service – especially if that proves to be the case in a year where Microsoft itself announced that subscriber growth has slowed down.


As Horizon 5 continues to break new records moving forward, Playground Games also recently announced that it is continuing to add elements into the game that will increase inclusivity and make the game more accessible to a wider range of players. On top of its base accessibility features that can currently be found within the racing sim, Horizon 5 is also set to add an on-screen sign language interpreter to the game in a future update.

IGN recently reviewed Forza Horizon 5 where we awarded it a rare score of 10/10 and dubbed it "the best open-world racing game available." For more from the series, make sure to check out our dedicated Forza Horizon 5 IGN page.


Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

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