15 millions players now in the HOF

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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On it’s current timeline, player count is merely a measure of marketing success, not game success.

Also, your ignoring the fact NFS had other viable competition around it at the time such as GT4, FM1, Juiced, and succeeded because the game was actually superior, nothing to do with it’s positioning. FH5 will obviously attract large numbers as it’s the only worthwhile simcade racer currently available. It’s success is coming from a business sense, not a “great game” sense. People by their own nature won’t dig deep enough into a title to figure out “is it actually better?” or rather is it an insult to the series itself? They just look at the pre-release hype, get sucked into the convenience of downloading it and just measly cope even if the game is dull as anything. Sort of like a mass hysteria.

PG and T10 push the content because they have to since they changed to a live service design in FH4, not because they care.

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It’s not an excuse. It’s been known to greatly inflate numbers for a game that ultimately didn’t have such potential.

Furthermore, it generates money but not enough. Netflix relies on loans to generate income on the creditor’s hopes that, “one day”, Netflix will pay them off. Microsoft, on the other hand, is infinitely rich and can put money into this until their competition goes out of business, which is probably what they ultimately want. Microsoft’s endgame to me is clear: full control of the industry. Which would be absolutely terrible if you look at Microsoft’s history of (mis)management of their gaming studios: Ensemble, Lionhead, Rare, even Bungie.

EA and Ubisoft are declining companies, especially Ubisoft, whose last hurrah was really Valhalla. Ubisoft has been losing key personnel after the scandals. Besides, they operate in such a way that they need all the players they can fish for their MTX system, hence the heavy discounts and now Ubisoft+.

Finally, Sony will probably use its service to complement its main policy at first. They clearly have a more cinema-like approach to gaming, which is more dependant on retail than subscriptions.

Personally I think less players with more playtime matter more. A dedicated fanbase is more likely to spend money on cosmetics for example. The huge numbers Microsoft got with Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 5 are volatile, as demonstrated by Steam graphs for both games. It does not matter how many people buy Sea of Thieves on Steam when they were forced to drop the price to $10 for people to buy.

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Exactly lol. Some people just amaze me… the game was a complete failure as a game, but it was sold anyways. Thats why the “formula” is working, because peole never learn from their mistakes, ever when talking about videogames. It wont matter how bad is FH5 talking about gampelay mechanics, these are going to be ported again to FH6 and people will again, love it, and buy FH6. Its how things work in videogaming industry of today, until people decide to buy a brain and use it, nothing ever is going to change.

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It’s ultimately meaningless. Player retention has been very low. You might have 15 million, but most on $1 Game Pass deals and only a couple million sales. Easy to reach 15 million this way. Even Sea of Thieves has.

OP made it sound FH5 had 15 million HoF entrants. Imagine FH5 with a 150+ million playerbase!

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That specific leaderboard has a name. Guess what that name is? So many experts here. Cheesus

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GP is a factor in every game’s numbers that is available on it, I don’t get how anyone would try and deny that.

Just on my profile there is DOOM, NFS 2015, Undertale, Townscaper, GTA SA’s ‘definitive’ edition, Omno, Genesis Noir, DOOM 64, Minecraft Dungeons, NFS Heat, F1 2020, Control, the XB1 version of NFS Rivals, The Evil Within 2, NFS Payback, Dirt 5, Resident Evil 7, The Outer Worlds, Full Throttle Remastered, The Little Acre, Day Of The Tentacle, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, Tacoma, Quantum Break, Wandersong, Tracks, Fractured Minds, Surviving Mars, Tekken 7, Hellblade, What Remains of Edith Finch, The Gardens Between, TWD A New Frontier, TWD Season 1, Unmechanical Extended, Late Shift, Pac-Man, Sherlock Holmes The Devil’s Daughter and The Swapper.

All those games I only played because they were on GP and I thought I might enjoy them, some I did hugely but I wouldn’t have been sure enough of that to have bothered paying for any of them beforehand.

Just because FH5 is bigger than any game on that list doesn’t mean the same principle doesn’t apply, people will play a GP game in a genre they have no actual interest or enthusiasm for just because it’s there available to them.

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I also played a lot of games on GP in December which I wouldn’t have considered buying, most of which were mediocre or terrible. I played some of them out of curiosity, or because I was doing the True Achievements Christmas challenge and those games had suitable achievements. It’s why the Codemasters rep here who said that playtime = popularity is wrong, I played Dirt 5 for hours but didn’t like it at all, I found it poor, as expected based on that company’s direction of travel for a long time.

GP really is the Netflix of gaming, a monthly fee for a load of mediocre tripe in the main, like the vast majority of Netflix’s output. I doubt Netflix will survive and at this rate nor will the gaming industry, at least not as we know it.

(Oh, I’ve never paid Netflix a penny and never subscribed to GP except using the £1 offers.)

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When you guys are taking about the 1$ you mean the one time offer for one month or the one time offer of converting Gold to Ultimate? Because in the second you are obviously paying for Gold anyway.
And isn’t it better to try a game for 1$ than playing a demo for a month? It’s a win win situation…
And yeah GP has mediocre games… how about lowering your standards just a little? In what universe is Fall Out Las Vegas a mediocre game? Just to name one.
It’s really hard to believe some here are not doing it on purpose.

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Nobody said literally ever single game on GP is poor. FH4 is on there for example.

I paid £2 for game pass last year, £1 for a month and then £1 for the ultimate extension, so no I didn’t need to have Gold first. Two months for £2. Microsoft can crow about those numbers all they like but any fool can get customer numbers up with loss leaders.

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You have to remember though that for every user like you that pays a couple of quid and that’s it, you’ll have a couple of users that take it at full price. It’s not much different to EA’s model with fifa ultimate team. You’ll have some players who won’t spend a penny more than they need to and you’ll have some whales that’ll drop a chunk down. The ‘games as a service’ model is perfect for Microsoft. They own the data centres they host it on and are not having to share the profits with retail partners, not spending money on physical media, and can offer third party studios a bigger cut of the profit they’d normally make. I eventually see Sony partnering with someone like Google to offer similar (Stadia is a failure at this point so a partnership there makes sense for both parties) but either way, this model is the future.

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Its a little hard to believe 15 million players are playing this game on a consistent basis. We all know the plethora of issues that plague the game, lots of areas and modes are being ignored and/or avoided. I can almost say with full certainty that tons of the 15 million are people with multiple accounts especially from those who may have already been banned for whatever reason. The only thing that they have actually fixed was the Eliminator not being able to see other players. The problems that were there on launch day are pretty much still present!

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Indeed it would be interesting to know the breakdown of unique users. It seems MS only tells the truth in statements to investors because they legally have to.

GP has been terrible for gaming imo, and the people cheerleading it are either not gamers, or they are but they don’t understand the ramifications of what they’re supporting.

Without GP, FH5 would have to be a much better product.

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cough Could we perhaps amend that to “Microsoft has been terrible for gaming”? How many studios have Microsoft bought that now offer vastly inferior products? Or at least products with a lack of care and attention?

Regarding Game Pass: I’m somewhere in the middle with whether it is good or not. On the one hand, yes, it often leads to poorer quality games as there is less need to generate sales.

On the other hand, I love Game Pass: Without Game Pass, I would never have been introduced to the Epic Halo franchise (played the MCC on Game Pass then bought it later)…I also would not have been introduced to the equally epic Mass Effect franchise (again played them on Game Pass before buying). And there have been a lot of other games that I have enjoyed playing which I never would have without Game Pass

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Of course, there are some benefits to players but my point is that it’s overall a negative for gaming. I mean sure, I paid a couple of quid and got two months to play FH5 and a load of other games. Incredible value. But I’d rather FH5 was a great product and the only way to get it was pay £50. Rather than a mediocre one which rests on its laurels. And where devs know it never needs to be ‘finished’ because they can keep working on it for years.

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Last I heard, MS admitted that GP is not profitable. Like was said in a previous post, the strategy seems to be to eat the losses in order to buy market share. Maybe this will work for them, maybe it won’t, but it will surely be terrible for the consumer.

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It’s not making profit now but they’ll have a number that once they hit, they’ll start making more. All about gaining new subscribers at the moment. That’s why the Xbox S exists and why they’re doing deals with everyone they can. Their overheads will pretty much remain a constant so they’ll just be trying to get as many eyeballs in front of the product as possible.

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I have been a game pass ultimate subscriber for several years now. For me the only games I have enjoyed are FH4, Titan Fall 2 and GTA5 which is not currently available. That’s 3 games out of the hundred+ on offer. My current subscription ends mid this year. Whether i renew it or not depends on the state of FH5 and whether they have implemented key fixes/improvements requested by the community.

With that said, I think FH5 has the potential to be played for several years to come but not without bug fixes, QoL improvements and the reintroduction of features that were cut at release. This will require extensive time/effort on their end which begs the question whether or not they intend on focusing on anything outside of major bugs or exploits. I hope I’m proven wrong but based on their history I believe the answer is no.

But in terms of how many players are actively playing FH5 I recommend you look at stem stats. Another user posted peek players at launch vs now and basically it is now 1/5th of what it was. That was a few weeks ago. Interesting to see what it is now and 2 weeks from now.

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