Xbox Game Studios

How many people play Forza? — 2024 statistics

Racing to crunch the numbers.

Fact-checked
First Released
May 3, 2005
Genre
Racing
Developer
Playground Games
Publisher
Xbox Game Studios

The Forza series, made by Playground Games, is like the cool kid of racing games, known for awesome graphics and super fun gameplay. Starting in 2005, we’ve seen 13 main games, and they keep getting better. It’s all about fast cars and freedom, driving however you want. This series is a big deal in gaming, so we’re going to share some Forza statistics to show what’s been happening lately. Also, we’ll answer the big question: how many people play Forza?Speaking of the gaming industry, it is a multi-faceted conglomeration of everything entertainment has to offer, so if you ever find yourself wondering about the esports industry’s worth, we’ve got you covered!

Forza key stats

Forza is a racing game franchise established by Playground Games in 2005, and as such, has gathered a tremendous number of fans that appreciate everything there is about the racing niche. This section will contain all of the important information about the Forza series including sales and revenue stats, as well as accolades and performance stats for their respective releases.

Forza Horizon 5 has over 37 million players worldwide.

(Sources: VGC, NME, Statista)

  • It took the game 7 months to reach this milestone.
  • It took two months to reach 15 million players.
  • For the curious, the total number of unique players can be checked on the game’s Hall of Fame leaderboard.
  • The game had already gathered over 1 million players through early access.
  • This means that the game managed to gross between $36 million and $79 million a week before its launch.
  • Because more than 10 million players played the game in its first week, Xbox confirmed that it was its biggest first week for a game in Xbox history.

Forza Horizon 5 is arguably the best game in the Forza series, as you can see in the fact that the game got more players than some franchises have in their lifetimes, before its actual release. This means that the hope surrounding the game was immense and that Xbox delivered everything as promised and more.

Forza Horizon 4 had 2 million players in its first week.

(Source: Goto Game)

  • Within the same time frame, Horizon 4 players have:
  • Logged over 4.6 million hours watched across Facebook, Mixer, Twitch, and YouTube.
  • Logged over 822.77 miles across all players.
  • Purchased over 4.1 million properties and owned more than 74.4 million cars.
  • Have discovered over 377.7 million roads.

It is no surprise that Forza Horizon 4 would perform so well on the market in its first week considering that there was so much hype surrounding the game around its launch window. The achievements that the community managed to log in such a short period are quite impressive, and we are sure that those numbers have climbed even higher since the game’s release.

Forza Horizon 4 and 5 sales reached 8.7 million units on Steam.

(Source: VG Insights)

  • Forza Horizon 4 sold 5.3 million units on Steam.
  • Forza Horizon 5 sold 3.4 million units on Steam.
  • Forza Horizon 4 grossed $185.1 million on Steam.
  • Forza Horizon 5 grossed $155.1 million on Steam.

Although not all of the Forza games are available on Steam, we do have some pretty nice numbers for the last two games in the series, Forza Horizon 4 and 5. These games are excellent and their sales and revenue numbers for a single platform reflect that perfectly.

The Forza revenue passed $1 billion in 2016.

(Source: Xbox)

  • The franchise achieved this milestone in December 2016.
  • One of the most notable achievements for the franchise during this time was that it had more than 14 million players across Xbox consoles and PC.
  • It established Forza as the best-selling racing franchise of that console generation.

The sheer size and popularity of the Forza franchise can best be expressed through the game’s total revenue statistics, which crossed an incredible milestone in 2016, marking Forza’s status as one of the best racing franchises out there. Since 2016 was quite a few years ago, we’re sure that this number has grown even further.

Forza Horizon 3 sales passed 10 million units in 2018.

(Sources: MS Poweruser, GameReactor, GameSpot)

  • The game sold 382,000 copies in its first week on the Xbox One.
  • 199,185 units were sold in Europe.
  • 138,981 units were told in the United States.
  • The UK had the most sales with 72,558 units.
  • France had 34,671 units.
  • Germany had 30,140 units.
  • By the time the franchise crossed the $1 billion threshold, this game was sitting at 2.5 million units sold.

Now we come to some general sales stats for Horizon 3 which show us that the game was quite popular during its first week even though it was not available on PlayStation consoles. Since its release, it has accumulated millions of sales and is a solid representative of the franchise in general.

A Forza Horizon 5 player got 13.5 million points for a skill chain just to get disappointed.

(Sources: Dexerto)

  • A player managed to rack up 13.5 million points by drifting in the game.
  • The total point count ended up being 13,585,500.
  • However, despite the score being immensely high, Playground Games limited the number of skill points players can get per feat.
  • The player ended up getting just 10 skill points.

Oh, you’ve been chaining drifts for 10 minutes and now your thumbs are bleeding? And you broke a record for the most points? Best I can do is 10 points.

Forza Horizon 4 and 5 had a combined 20.5 million hours watched on Twitch in their best years.

(Source: SullyGnome)

  • Forza Horizon 4 had 7.8 million hours watched on Twitch in 2021.
  • It had 954,679 broadcasting hours.
  • 900 viewers were watching the game on average.
  • 108 channels were streaming the game on average.
  • It had a viewer ratio of 8.3
  • Its max viewer count was 65,696.
  • 115,494 broadcasters streamed the game.
  • Forza Horizon 5 had 12.7 million hours watched on Twitch in 2021.
  • It had 731,382 broadcasting hours.
  • 1,456 viewers were watching the game on average.
  • 83 channels were streaming the game on average.
  • It had a viewer ratio of 17.4.
  • Its max viewer count was 103,730.
  • 94,586 broadcasters streamed the game.

Here, we have some Twitch statistics for the two most popular Horizon games in recent years — Forza Horizon 4 and 5. As you can see, the total number of broadcasting hours for both of the games might not be as much as other AAA titles in more popular genres, but these numbers are excellent for two racing games, as the demographic in that genre is a good deal smaller. The other Forza games are on Twitch as well, but their numbers have decreased so much over the years that there is nothing notable about them to mention.

To sum up

Alright, so that would be all we have to say about the marvelous Forza series! As you can see, the most relevance around the series lies in the most recent games as they have been performing above and beyond all expectations, leading to milestones that many gaming companies can be envious of. Each of the Forza games was a titan in its class during its release years, so there is no reason to think that older Forza games are lacking in quality. It is simply the newest games’ time to shine. We sincerely hope that you have enjoyed this and that your questions have been answered!

Sources

  • “Forza Horizon 4 – Steam Stats”. VG Insights, 2023, https://vginsights.com/game/1293830
  • “Forza Horizon 5 – Steam Stats”. VG Insights, 2023, https://vginsights.com/game/1551360
  • “The Forza Franchise Has Exceeded $1 Billion in Retail Sales”. Xbox, 2017, https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2017/02/13/forza-franchise-exceeded-1-billion-retail-sales/
  • “Forza Horizon 4”. SullyGnome, 2021, https://sullygnome.com/game/Forza_Horizon_4/2021
  • “Forza Horizon 5”. SullyGnome, 2021, https://sullygnome.com/game/Forza_Horizon_5/2021
  • “Forza Horizon 5 has reached 20 million players”. VGC, 2022, https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/forza-horizon-5-has-reached-20-million-players/
  • “‘Forza Horizon 5’ has over 15 million players just two months after release”. NME, 2022, https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/forza-horizon-5-has-over-15million-players-just-two-months-after-release-3134094
  • “Forza Horizon 4 Sees Two Million Players in Its First Week”. Goto Game, 2018, https://goto.game/forza-horizon-4-2-million-players/
  • “‘Forza Horizon 3’ sold 382,000 copies in its first week on Xbox One”. MS Poweruser, 2016, https://mspoweruser.com/forza-horizon-3-sold-382000-copies-first-week-xbox-one/
  • “Forza Horizon 3 Sells 2.5 Million Units, Entire Series Passes $1 Billion Retail Sales”. GameSpot, 2017, https://www.gamespot.com/articles/forza-horizon-3-sells-25-million-units-entire-seri/1100-6447805/
  • “Forza Horizon 3 surpasses 10 million players”. GameReactor, 2018, https://www.gamereactor.eu/forza-horizon-3-surpasses-10-million-players/
  • “Forza Horizon 5 player breaks 13.5m with insane skill chain but there’s a catch”. Dexerto, 2022, https://www.dexerto.com/forza/forza-horizon-5-player-breaks-13-5m-insane-skill-chain-catch-1758143/
  • “13,585,500 skill chain…that’s enough”. Reddit, 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/forza/comments/smssy0/13585500_skill_chainthats_enough/?utm_term=1731348360&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_source=embed&utm_name=&utm_content=header
  • “Forza Horizon 5 players” Statista, 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1385126/forza-horizon-5-players/