"Forza Horizon 5" Sells 5 Million Copies on PS5: Microsoft's Years of Exclusivity Go to Waste
The co-developer of "Forza Horizon 5," Vitaas, confirmed on its official website that the game has surpassed 5 million copies sold on the PS5 platform. Launched on Sony consoles last year, it quickly became one of the best-selling games on PS5 in 2025, even surpassing some of Sony's first-party titles.
Vitaas disclosed in its latest infographic that the racing masterpiece has received consistent praise from players and media worldwide, boasting a Metacritic score of 92.
Vitaas also revealed its development contribution: approximately 90% of the realistic vehicles in the game and its DLC expansion content were created by Vitaas.
The team also produced a massive amount of scene environment resources and character models, built a complete material texture library, customized exclusive visual details for various ecological landscapes, and developed a high-precision vehicle dynamics animation and vehicle damage effect system.
"Forza Horizon 5" initially launched on Xbox and PC platforms years ago, and its popularity remains undiminished after being ported to PS5. This impressive performance has laid the market foundation for "Forza Horizon 6," which will be released on PS5 later this year.
Despite reports that Microsoft is internally discussing re-implementing a console exclusivity strategy, the strong performance of this racing masterpiece on PS5 suggests that proactively abandoning a large overseas market and substantial sales solely to return to the concept of exclusivity is unreasonable in the current industry environment and lacks practical significance for the Xbox brand.
Microsoft's Helix project has fully shifted its focus to the PC market, rather than traditional game consoles. It is reported that the hardware will not be equipped with a customized graphics card, directly eliminating the core advantage of the Xbox console.
The next generation of Xbox products may completely abandon the traditional console form factor and instead create a cross-device that simulates the console gaming experience.