Forza Horizon 5 was on many shortlists for 2021 game of the year thanks to its beautiful scenery, majestic open world, and its wonderfully rounded representation of Mexico and its culture.
The combination of a strong pre-release campaign and launching on Xbox Game Pass saw it race past the 10 million player mark and be the biggest launch in Xbox history.
Now it's hit a new mark.
Forza Horizon 5 hits 15 million players
Over the weekend Forza Horizon 5 saw its 15 millionth player account created, a staggering feat to achieve in just 65 days since launch.
Its predecessor Forza Horizon 4 reached 12 million players in its first year, which only goes to show what a success story FH5 has been.
Of course, a good chunk of that player base will be from Xbox Game Pass. We've already seen player counts of FH5 drop off on Steam, where players definitely had to buy the title rather than test it out with the Game Pass membership.
There the daily player count is barely ahead of FH4, and sometimes lower.
Of course, none of that is to undermine this amazing achievement. The success of the Forza Horizon franchise should see more open-world racers and perhaps convince Polyphony to finally expand the Gran Turismo world too.
What's next for Forza Horizon 5?
Exploration rather than story is the driving force for Forza Horizon games, and that can only get you so far before you've gathered all the collectibles, found all the barns, and filled your garage with more cars than you could possibly drive.
We aren't expecting the first of two expansion packs until June 2022, so players have a bit of time to wait until there is new content to enjoy. With multiplayer issues still cropping up in the game we have to hope that patches will clean up the game and make the convoying experience more fun.