Forza Horizon 5 Passes 6 Million Players Less Than a Week After Release

Forza Horizon 5 Record Users 01.jpg
Less than a week after it was released, Microsoft has announced that 6 million players have tried Forza Horizon 5.

On November 5th, nearly 800,000 owners of the Premium edition of Forza Horizon 5 played Playground Games’s newest racing title. In the week since, that number has grown to over 6 million players across PC, Xbox and cloud platforms. 4.5 million players enjoyed FH5 on the first day alone, a number eclipsed only by Grand Theft Auto V’s launch day, and comfortably the biggest launch day for a racing game.

The reviews of the title have been overwhelmingly positive, including my own review of Forza Horizon 5 published recently. The setting for the fifth edition of the Forza Horizon series is Mexico, and Playground Games has offered players the largest map of any title in the series plus over 500 cars at launch. The open world themed racing game allows you to compete with or against other players from around the world who appear on the map simultaneously, or race solo in any of the hundreds of single-player challenges on offer.

Forza Horizon 5 Record Users 02.jpg


Our Forza Horizon 5 forum is live, including a Horizon 5 photo thread that I’ve set up. If you’re among the millions of players now enjoying this title, be sure to drop a photo of your favourite car or setting from Forza’s Mexico.
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: Mark Lawton, Cristian Luis, Bonehead and 2 others
About author
Mike Smith
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

More in Forza Horizon

Comments

H
How's the driver anim., they managed to overcome that 90° steering w. limitation yet? :D
 
Last edited:
Mekonrider
From what I've read, it's not the arcade driving that puts me off a bit it's the constant cut scene cringe you have to put up with. Silly podium dances and a general rich douche kids vibe.

For stress relief I think I'll stick to GTA V with mods as most of the models are Forza rips anyway. Why win a car when you can steal one!
 
U
I can't drive in a straight line with my T500 wheel. The cars are oscillating from side to side and I am overcorrecting all the time. It's not the FFB, it feels like the steering isn't linear or something like that. Hard to describe, it feels like driving with worn out steering rack and wheel bearings.

The FFB is pretty useless too, if you're feeling a slide on the wheel, it's already to late to counter steer. The self aligning torque doesn't feel right somehow.

For me, it's way harder to drive than in any "real" simulation, because the cars don't do what I expect. You can't get the rear loose with controlled weight transfer to the front, for example.

The FOV slider is to limited too. I would need 33° vertical FOV for 1:1 scale but the lowest setting is 40°.
 
Cristian Luis
Nice to know about this! So many people engaged into a racing game like this.

However, I would like to dedicate some words about the relationship between players and sim-racing. You know that there are much fewer people engaged in sim-racing compared to arcade racing games, even if these have real-life cars and tracks.

Currently, I work for a videogame company which makes racing games. In one of the speeches, they were exposing examples of videogames with little niche which had a lot of players that demanded something, but in practice, they played the game in a different way. Sim-racing was one of the topics.

Many people demand realism on sim-racing titles, but according to their data, less than 1% play 100% race distance. When a certain game mode (multiplayer with everyone with fixed setups) was added, it was praised and a majority of players had fun that way. Less than 40% play races with more than 25% race distance and only about 8% of players play without driving assists. Finally, there is VR. It's praised by everyone, but in reality, very few people buy VR googles compared to the total player base. VR also diminishes realism because it nullifies the tunnel effect when racing at high speeds (but of course, it adds a lot of immersion, and IMHO that's what matters and makes VR worthy for many people :) ). In real life, the faster you drive in a car, the greater is the tunnel effect in driving.

I remember to read from someone that in 2017, only about 5% of iRacing players were able to reach the 3000 points barrier. Plus, in competitive sim-racing, the key to being fast is to know how to handle well the car knowing how to set up it, adapting to the game vulnerabilities and exploits to take the best of it.

Many people demand realism, yet a very, very small amount of people are fond of playing in a realistic way. Even some of the pro players. Because of that, the company I work for is more fond of developing arcade games and mass-market titles overall. Who knows if there are many other companies where this mentality occurs when the priority is to reach a very large number of players...
 
Last edited:
GTxForza
I'm pretty sure this and Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown will be both the best open-world driving games in the early 2020s!
 
Damage Inc
I'm not a huge Horizons fan (had the demo of one set in wales...3 was it?) nice graphics, started in an Audi TT, then upgraded to an Impreza which handled awful so I stopped playing...well that AND the awful premise of the "music" (in brackets because the music was SOOOOOO awful) festival and racing grated so much. But I'd imagine most younger simmers start off on games like this, so out of those millions a few will discover the greater delights of sims and that's a good thing.
 
Kevin Troschinski
Premium
If someone can tell me if my 2070super can hold at least 60fps in ultra on a 3440x1440 res. i`ll give the game a chance.

Have seen different benchmarks so far, a i am not trusting them :thumbsdown:

Beside that Forzas are alway welcome as a lean back and chill games, without wheel. :thumbsup:
 
U
Kevin Troschinski said:
If someone can tell me if my 2070super can hold at least 60fps in ultra on a 3440x1440 res. i`ll give the game a chance.
Click to expand...
I7 8700K, 16 GB DDR4 RAM and a normal RTX 2070 here. I run the game at 2560 * 1440 with steady 60 Fps at ultra settings and 8x MSAA.

Your 2070 Super should be enough to render the game with 3440 * 1440 pixels at 60 Fps.

But for 4k, it's definitely to slow, I'm only getting around 30-40 Fps in 4k.
 
Mekonrider
Cristian Luis said:
VR also diminishes realism because it nullifies the tunnel effect when racing at high speeds (but of course, it adds a lot of immersion, and IMHO that's what matters and makes VR worthy for many people :) ). In real life, the faster you drive in a car, the greater is the tunnel effect in driving.
Click to expand...
Disagree with you a bit there. If you train yourself to look up the road properly the tunnel vision thing doesn't really happen. A problem I often have on the motorbike is I find myself going way faster than I thought I was going because I've got fairly good eye discipline now so it doesn't feel fast but there I am doing 90 in a 60....If I'm cracking on I won't look at the speed at all.

You get an impression of speed from how fast you are relative to other people sometimes not really if you have an open stretch or on a track. I remember reading an interview with Colin Edwards the WSBK/GP rider and he said speed in itself isn't really a thing to get bothered about. 100 or 150 it's all the same.
 
C
Cote Dazur said:
"comfortably the biggest launch day for a racing game"
Why should I care?

Proving once again that their is a huge difference between a racing game and a simulator. It addresses 2 different groups, one is much bigger than the other, yes, some people can be part of the 2 groups, or any other, but still, both genre are very different.

I tried FH4, out of curiosity, still fire it every once in a while, when it works, I enjoy a slow cruise in the British countryside, as I sip my coffee.

If I feel like immersing myself in some simulated driving, I put on my VR goggle and immerse myself in motorsport with one of the proper SIM. That I do every day.

FH4 is the same as FH5, different country, seems to me a lot of people are bored to death from FH4 and think FH5 will be less boring, it will ware out very fast, no substance to it, just easy peasy stuff.

Meanwhile, after 8 years, I still enjoy more than ever AC.

So what do you think I think about those 4.5 millions first day and 6 millions after a week people playing, or trying to play FH5?

I wish them to have a lot of fun, but they could be playing FIFA and it would be of about as much interest to me. :)
Click to expand...

It is intersting then, to me at least, why many are trying to make AC into Forza Horizon and using controllers.
All these free roam playgrounds and AI traffic mods in AC is pure Forza Horizon, but it will never look as good.

I agree with what you are saying, but AC is not a good example with where people are taking it.

For me it seems a lot of people don't want to pay £49.99 for FH and instead try to make AC like it.

If you just use AC for track racing and use a wheel set up, then i get why FH isn't something you'd like, but to play AC with those free roam mods and trying to make it FH or TDU and using a controller, its nowhere near the game FH5 is... a poor poor rendition of it...
 
Cristian Luis
Mekonrider said:
Disagree with you a bit there. If you train yourself to look up the road properly the tunnel vision thing doesn't really happen. A problem I often have on the motorbike is I find myself going way faster than I thought I was going because I've got fairly good eye discipline now so it doesn't feel fast but there I am doing 90 in a 60....If I'm cracking on I won't look at the speed at all.

You get an impression of speed from how fast you are relative to other people sometimes not really if you have an open stretch or on a track. I remember reading an interview with Colin Edwards the WSBK/GP rider and he said speed in itself isn't really a thing to get bothered about. 100 or 150 it's all the same.
Click to expand...

Most sim-racer enthusiasts aren't really trained for that (I myself am physically disabled). When your favorite cars to emulate in sims consist of very potent ones that allow you to reach 300 (even 350 km/h, such as turbo F1 cars), then...

In HRT (an old F1 team) their drivers didn't use VR goggles when testing their professional simulator. To me, VR is better suited for gaming purposes and immersion. After all, sim racing videogames are above all, videogames. From my viewpoint, games must accomplish to entertain, bring awesome experiences and have fun first, which involves making the game comfortable and accesible to play for a majority of the target audience. :)
 
Last edited:
MattGTX
The Forza Horizon games are a great way to have fun in smaller sessions. For me it goes like this pick the controller, race and explore the map a bit and go to college.

The only problem I have with FH5 is that it feels very similar to FH4 (with a different map, of course).
Before that, the Horizon games all had a different feel and a different way you immersed yourself into the festival (almost an inter-game story progression):
In FH1 you were trying to qualify for the Festival, in FH2 you were already in it (presumably bc of the things you did in the previous festival), and in FH3 you were the one calling shots and deciding about the festival expansions - and those decisions would affect the world and the type of races that would happen. FH4 kinda broke this.
Hopefully, in the future, they will bring back those little story elements to make players feel more immersed in the FH world
 
Cristian Luis
Kyuubeey said:
What does being physically disabled have to do with looking further down the road?
Click to expand...

I personally have difficulties with it. I have slow reflexes and a fragile body due to a chronic illness. :( Regardless, when I drive my car at 100 km/h for example, I have a much lower field of vision (compared to going at 20 or 40 km/h), and to the sides, I am incapable to look at a "clean" scenario. I have much less vision. I use to look at the mirrors to see what I have behind and to my sides because what I see is more clear.

If someone put me in a racing car and push it to the max, I would last very few laps. :D Probable even with the training I wouldn't be able to have that edge Mekorider mentions. Disability is the inability to do something after all. I'm limited physically.
 
Last edited:

Latest News

Article information

Author
Mike Smith
Article read time
1 min read
Views
7,412
Comments
76
Last update

Share this article

Are you buying car setups?

  • Yes

  • No

Results are only viewable after voting.
See comments…
Back
Top