The excitement surrounding Forza Horizon 5 has been palpable as the game's November 9 release is nearly here, but thanks to the Premium Edition of the game, a lot of fans have been able to get access to the arcade racer early. In fact, the number of players who have tried the title before launch has surpassed an impressive 1 million.
Although the game doesn't flat out tell the player how many racing fans have signed in to play the early access version of the title, Forza Horizon 5's challenges list the number of players who have completed them and, according to a tweet from Twitch streamer Stalion83, one challenge has already had over 1 million players attempt it. This is an impressive number for a game that isn't even officially out yet, especially since it will be free for Xbox Game Pass subscribers when it launches in just a few hours.
Forza Horizon 5 has received a lot of excellent press in the last few days as reviews have been published saying that the game is a "must-play" for Xbox owners. According to Metacritic, it's currently tied Forza Horizon 3 as the best-reviewed game in the series with an aggregate score of 91. This puts Forza Horizon 5 in the top four most well-reviewed games for the Xbox Series X and as the highest-scoring Microsoft first-party title on the platform. While that correlation doesn't necessarily mean that good reviews are the sole reason for the game's prerelease success, the overwhelmingly positive response to the title also isn't hurting its sales by any means.
Having 1 million players trying out Forza Horizon 5 before its launch is certainly impressive, but the shocking part of that number is, as mentioned above, that the game is headed to Game Pass when it launches. There hasn't been a new mainline Forza title since 2018 as the series broke its annual rotation between the Horizon and Motorsport series, so it seems like the franchise's absence has been noted by fans and the new entry has proven that it was missed during its time away.
If the game's numbers are already so high prerelease, it seems like Forza Horizon 5 has the potential to be the biggest game in the franchise's history. Forza Horizon 4 is one of the Xbox One's best-selling titles, and, given Horizon 5's early success, it seems like it might be able to easily surpass the previous game's records.
Forza Horizon 5 launches tomorrow, November 9, for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.