Forza Horizon 5, Playground Games’ next open-world racing game, will officially launch tomorrow. However, almost a million people are already playing it right now.
According to VGC, the Hall Of Fame leaderboard as of the time of reporting has over 800,000 players across PC and Xbox platforms.
Players who bought the more expensive Premium Edition gets to play the game 5 days ahead of launch.
On Steam, the Premium Edition costs RM299 in Malaysia – RM100 extra than the retail price of RM199. On the Microsoft Store (which includes the Xbox and PC versions), it’s RM388- RM54 more than the standard edition’s RM234.
Reviews for Horizon 5 has been massively positive, and something most fans have expected from the series.
There are two takeaways from this. One is how much goodwill the developers have garnered that almost a million players are willing to pay more for early access (plus two upcoming expansions) ahead of release. The positive early reviews might have also helped.
The other is how we are now mostly okay with paying more to play a game before its intended release date. A stark difference from the old days of 2015 where campaigns to release a game early via pre-orders were frowned upon.
Various games have offered early access as a pre-order incentive before, Forza Horizon 5 is not the first. But this is one of the first instances where we get to see how many people actually bought those more expensive editions, a fascinating insight.
Forza Horizon 5 officially launches tomorrow, November 9, for the PC (Steam, Microsoft Store), Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.