Halo Infinite has swooped past the 20 million players mark, making it the biggest launch in the franchise’s history. Not only that, but Forza Horizon 5 has opened up its open world rendition of Mexico to more than 18 million superstars. Both games are big success stories for Xbox, even if player count is just one small part of the overall picture.
With over 20 million Spartans joining us so far, we’re thrilled to announce that #HaloInfinite is the biggest launch in Halo franchise history!
Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the next step in this great journey. pic.twitter.com/d4EIsvWYVr
— Halo (@Halo) January 25, 2022
What story is that? Well, it’s the tale of Xbox Game Pass and free-to-play multiplayer. Both Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 launched into the subscription service Xbox Game Pass on day one, meaning that players simply cannot be equated to sales of a $60 game. Microsoft announced in the last week that Xbox Game Pass now has more than 25 million subscribers – up 7 million over January 2021 – and it’s certain that both Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 were significant draws for people that simply wanted to run through the campaign and hoon around the open world for a bit.
Not only that, but Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is completely free-to-play, not even requiring an Xbox Live Gold subscription in order to play it on console. Looking at the Xbox achievement stats, you can see that just 27.19% of all players have earnt the First Contact achievement for completing the first level. That means that there’s 5.4 million paid and subscribing players who have played the campaign, with close to 15 million only choosing to play the multiplayer.
Despite these caveats, it definitely doesn’t mean that either game is a financial failure. Both are sure to be multi-million sellers – Forza’s early access release and player counts indicated that it had well over a million people buying the game outright before the Game Pass release – especially when factoring in how well they both charted on Steam for their simultaneous PC release. Halo has also leant heavily on controversial microtransactions for the free-to-play multiplayer which, while mocked and hated, are very commonly seen when playing the game. You sometimes see entire teams with the expensive cat ear cosmetics!
Both games are well worth checking out. In our Forza Horizon 5 review, Dom wrote:
“Forza Horizon 5 continues the series’ legacy, usurping Forza Horizon 4 as the new pinnacle of open-world racing and as a graphical showcase for the new generation of Xbox console.”
Meanwhile, for Halo Infinite, we said:
“Halo Infinite marks a clear moment in 343 Studios’ handling of the series. They finally have a grasp on what makes Master Chief tick, and they bring all of that knowledge to bear in often-spectacular fashion. While some issues nag, it’s clear that Halo Infinite is a brilliant new entry in the series, and one that makes this particular sci-fi FPS relevant once again.”
