Lionel Stump

Forza Horizon 6 has sold almost 5M copies already! (@alineaanalytics estimates) Forza Horizon 6‘s gross revenue across platforms now exceeds $325M, with around 1.7M players opting for the premium advanced early access edition (including the Game Pass add-on). It’s a fantastic commercial result, and the launch performance puts Forza Horizon 6 in the top four of 2026 releases before the first week is even done. Our data shows that Xbox gamers across console, PC, and cloud (I’m not doing the XBOX thing…) really showed up for Forza, accounting for 42% of copies sold (almost 2.1M) versus Steam’s 2.8M. 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 2M+ paid number. 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%. The reason is regional, as Xbox’s player share is heavily Western, where price points are higher and players were more willing to eat the cost for advanced access. Steam’s player base is more geographically diverse, including China (the #2 Steam market for Forza Horizon 6), Japan (#4), and Brazil (#6). Regional pricing means Forza costs less per player in those markets, which decreases revenue per unit even though unit volume is healthy. The early in-game content has also done well. Around 170K Steam players bought the Forza Horizon 6 treasure map, generating an extra $400K via a simple map unlock (bit of a cheeky thing to make folks pay for, if you ask me). But you can’t deny: Xbox is collecting meaningful incremental revenue from players who already paid full price (or more!) for the game, on content that costs effectively nothing to produce. It’s the kind of monetisation move that’s quietly defining Xbox’s first-party economics amid Game Pass and hardware stagnation. With its 4.9M sold across all platforms, Forza Horizon 6 is currently the #4 top-selling new 2026 game by copies sold across Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. The full top four: - Resident Evil Requiem (7.1M) - Slay the Spire 2 (6.5M) - Crimson Desert (5.3M) - Forza Horizon 6 (4.9M) It’s safe to say Forza Horizon 6 would have already topped this list by the end of the weekend (or even right now), had it launched on PS5 day-in-date. For reference, Forza Horizon 5 launched on PS5 almost exactly a year ago and sold almost 6M copies there ($330M in gross revenue). The PS5 release of Horizon 6 later this year is going to be a key strategic data point for Xbox in all of this. 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 now though, Forza Horizon 6 is doing exactly what a tentpole first-party launch should do. 4.9M copies sold, $325M in gross revenue, 3M+ Game Pass players, and a global audience that’s clearly responding to the Japan setting. Playground has delivered. What an achievement, and ANOTHER 2026 banger. What a fucking game. Full write-up, including a whole lot more data, on the free Substack (link's on my profile)

November 19th Wishlist Now: xbx.lv/4nMfojd