While Playground Games has celebrated the fact that Forza Horizon 6 has gotten more than six million players, the company has yet to confirm any sales figures for the racing game. According to estimates by Rhys Elliot of Alinea Analytics, 4.9 million copies of the title are believed to have been sold so far.
This means that the gross revenue for Forza Horizon 6 across PC and Xbox Series X/S is higher than $325 million. Of the 5 million copies sold, around 1.7 million are believed to have been for the more expensive version of the title that provided three days of advanced access.
Interestingly, when it comes to platform splits, Elliot estimates that 42 percent of the copies sold—almost 2.1 million—were on XBOX platforms across console, PC, and cloud. Steam, on the other hand, accounted for 2.8 million copies. The fact that it sold this well on XBOX despite being available through Game Pass is also noteworthy. This has also meant that XBOX accounts for around 51 percent of gross revenue for the game, compared to Steam accounting for 49 percent. This comes down to the fact that, when players are buying from the Microsoft Store, the company doesn’t have to pay Steam any platform fees.
“That’s an unusually strong Xbox-side performance by any standard, but it’s made even more impressive by over 3M people accessing Forza Horizon 6 via Game Pass on top of that 2.1M paid number,” wrote Elliot. “Despite Xbox accounting for fewer paid copies than Steam, the Xbox version of Forza Horizon 6 is actually generating more revenue. Xbox accounts for around 51% of total gross revenue, against Steam’s 49%.”
Regional pricing is also one of the main reasons for this split in revenue across platforms. Elliot has noted that the XBOX player base is based heavily in the Western world. Steam, on the other hand, has a more geographically diverse audience, with China, Japan, and Brazil being the second, fourth, and sixth biggest markets for Forza Horizon 6, respectively. Steam also has other advantages in these markets, like regional pricing.
Some of the revenue that could be generated by Forza Horizon 6 is still seemingly being left on the table, however, due to Game Pass. The analyst has estimated that more than 3 million players are using the subscription service to play the title.
“This is now the consistent shape of Microsoft’s first-party Steam releases,” Elliot explained. “Steam does the unit-sales heavy lifting, Game Pass absorbs the engagement on Xbox, and the day-and-date strategy quietly continues working exactly as designed. And of course, there’s the PS5 version coming later, which will bring in millions more players.”
Looking at overall demographics for Forza Horizon 6 on Steam, 44.6 percent have been fans of the franchise, having previously played Forza Horizon 5. 28.9 percent, on the other hand, had also played Forza Horizon 4. On the XBOX side of things, across PC, console, and cloud, Game Pass pushes these percentage figures higher, with 93.3 percent of Forza Horizon 6 players having played 5, and 76.5 percent having played 4.
As for what this says about the potential PS5 release, comparing sales figures to other games that came out, Elliot believes that a day-and-date release on Sony’s console would have helped Forza Horizon 6 handily beat other high sellers, like Resident Evil Requiem with its 7.1 million copies sold. Currently, Forza Horizon 6 sits at the number 4 spot, below Resident Evil Requiem, Slay the Spire 2, and Crimson Desert.
“The PS5 release of Horizon 6 later this year is going to be a key strategic data point for Xbox in all of this,” noted the analyst. “Forza Horizon 5‘s PS5 numbers are sitting right there in our dataset, and Forza Horizon 6 – even with the Forza-on-PS5 novelty wearing off a bit – has every commercial signal pointing to outperforming that.”
For more on Forza Horizon 6, take a look at our review.
