population numbers 6 months after release & 2 months after BM

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH3 Discussion
1

There has been some press release mid February 2017 that the game sold over 2,5 million copies, but as usual that is probably physical copies and not including digital sales. I pulled some stats out of the game today to see how many people played the game and how many got the Blizzard Mountain expansion. Also how the console vs PC distribution is.

To get an idea of how many players got the game, the global leader board for the first showcase “off the chain” is probably the best indication. Also under the HUD and gameplay settings you can toggle “show all platforms” on and off which gives you the ability to see how many players are on XBox and on PC.

Off the Chain leader board stats :
global: 3,412,789 players
XBox: 3,165,505 players (93%)
PC: 247,284 players (7%)

Conclusion :
Almost 3,5 million players is big, it’s still far off the records of Gran Turismo 3 (15 mill) or even Forza 3 (5,5 mill) but for the Horizon series it’s the most popular game so far and on the current generation consoles it seems only Need for Speed (2015) does better. What also surprised me though is how few players from those 3,5 million play it on PC, only 250k players which is as low as 7% of the player base. While the game has been a success on XBox it sure hasn’t really gone off the ground on the PC. Bad marketing? PC players simply not interested? Probably both.

To get an idea for the amount of players who got the Blizzard Mountain expansion is a bit more tricky. That first race where you are dropped from a helicopter doesn’t have a score board (same as the very first Centenario race towards Byron Bay in the base game). To make it worse, after that initial race you are free to do whatever race or event you like in Blizzard Mountain or roam around freely. Many races are locked until you get more stars but the game isn’t forcing you to do a particular event similar like Off the Chains in the base game. I went through all speed camera’s and the Lower Plateau speed trap had by far the biggest numbers, it’s one you most likely will hit at least once if you play the expansion for less than an hour and I believe it was also one that was unlocked at the very beginning. So when looking at the stats from that speed camera I got the following data:

Lower Plateau speed trap :
global: 438,309 players (13% of all players who got the game)
XBox: 403,852 players (92%)
PC: 34,457 players (8%)

Conclusion :
Overall about 13% of players who bought the main game also bought the expansion and that’s more or less the same for both PC and console. If you check the speedtraps in FH2 the one near the main festival site (East) has 3,498,716 players while the one closest to the Storm Island festival hub has 358,037 players. So for FH2 only about 10% of the players got the expansion. I’d say there is a slight increase in the percentage of players that also buy the expansion but overall it still stays relatively low. Are expansions too expensive? Are players simply not interested? Probably both as well.

I personally think they did a pretty decent job with Blizzard Mountain and for me it’s the best expansion I’ve seen in any Forza franchise game. While the cars could have been done a bit better (group B racing cars without racing liveries and copy/pasted road going dashboards is meh) I was very satisfied with the map expansion and events themselves.

Your thoughts?

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Now i know why they don’t care to fix pc version…

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They don’t fix the Xbox one either so that’s kind of moot. They don’t even care to tell us about the next expansion, just in case we start playing again; they already have the money via expansion pass. No big surprise the active numbers drop off so much. There just isn’t much to do.

2 Likes
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maybe the PC numbers are lower since it is a digital play anywhere title and everyone started playing on xbone first because of the issues PC had at launch and then crossed over to PC

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I doubt that would have much influence. Otherwise the distribution between XBox and PC would have been very different for the BM expansion and that’s not the case. But feel free to check a more distant leaderboard (or final showcase or something) and I’m sure the result will be the same, about 7-8% of PC players, 92-93% of XBox players.

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I started on the PC and then went and got an Xbox One S when they started “updating” the PC version and the performance and reliability went down hill faster than Eddie the Eagle Edwards on a Ski Jump…

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From what I’ve seen a lot more casual non Forza, non driving game players got FH3 mainly because of its good graphics and more easy to use driving model and arcade physics vs other Forza games. It was also highly reviewed and the series now has traction which probably resulted in more purchases than in the past.

-k

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If we’re just talking sales l’m sure the number is higher. A lot of people buy it “and play it later”. Some people play solely offline.

To get an idea how many players still play the game you can probably see from the completion % of the easiest Forzathons how much of the player base has retained active.

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It would be interesting to see the number of people, who asked refund on PC, because of the technical issues. My guess is that this number would be quite significant compared to the total number of copies sold on PC. The longevity (as things to do, story line) of the FH3 is quite poor and for “just passing by” people it gets boring rather quick and people move on to other games (you are not so restricted in your choices on PC as you are on console). I think Forza Motorsport 7 shows us the real situation of, how well a (real) Forza game will do on PC since its core element, longevity and audience is a bit different (maybe even simracing fans will turn their head and check out that more arcadish type of game, but with good selection of cars). Of course that means that T10 and MS won’t screw somehow things up again and will eliminate the biggest flaws that Apex and FH3 have.

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I strongly doubt Forza 7 will be a success on PC. Why would anyone who has a gaming PC buy this wannabe sim/esports console-port when you have access to iRacing, RaceRoom, a highly moddable Assetto Corsa, Project CARS 1 & 2, etc? For the Horizon series it’s different, that type of game is quite unique for PC players so there I saw some potential (obviously missed). For FM7 not at all.

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11

Forza’s strongest selling points for PC would be eye-candy and car selection (to be honest based on so far seen gameplay video Project CARS 2 looks graphically pretty meh… cardboard people in 2017, really?!), other than that… not much (as you said).

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One of the reasons I don’t play it on PC is because Forza Horizon 3 does not have the software available for my Steering Wheel. I have a Logitech G27 which is not that old and Forza Horizon 3 does not support it. I have problems getting the settings right on it and when I finally get the force feedback set and the wheel set the way I want it, with 20 25 mins the settings just kind of disappear.

If Forza would support my wheel I would play exclusively on PC but since they don’t I will play on Xbox. Sure is disappointing though.

13

I wonder if PC players present differently over Xbox ones. I know you can filter out PC players and such, but as this game is a Play Anywhere title, if one predominantly plays on their PC but one time they play on their Xbox, are they now considered an Xbox player? That could explain the comparatively high Xbox numbers, even though if that factor were taken care of, Xbox would still likely see the higher player count. This is the tenth Forza game on a console (counting FH2: FnF), but only the second game on PC, and the first full game on PC. It’s an established title on console, but it still has a lot to prove on PC.

I think the game not being on Steam hurts PC player totals as well. At least not being able to launch the game with the Steam Launcher.

With the addition of achievement percentages, you could additionally see how many players (as a percentage, obviously) actually completed things such as the last Showcase event, how many made it to level 150, how many did all the championships, etc. You could also use that to determine a percentage of players who bought Blizzard Mountain; the easiest/first achievement you get there (Welcome to Base Camp?), theoretically everyone who has the expansion should have it. Last time I looked I think it was around 10%, but this was a couple months ago. Unfortunately I don’t think you could use this with the Forzathon achievements to determine how many people are still playing today, as there’s likely a good chunk of people (myself included) who go on solely for the Forzathon events now and then they’re back to whatever they were previously playing when finished.

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This (+ Windows 10 requirement) is probably the most important factor that keeps many players away from even giving a chance to this franchise.
As for achievements tracking, many people have problems unlocking them on PC (I had also this problem in the beginning).

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15

Good question. I assume that once you set a score for a leaderboard (or you improve your previous one) that the game simply records which platform you play it from. Pretty much similar to some games where you can just see if a score was set with a controller or a wheel. So if you set a score from your PC, that one will count. If the next day you set one from your XBox, then the XBox will count.

As fas as Play Anywhere goes, I even prefer that to be added to the XBox players. I’m not really interested in how many XBox players play it on their Windows PC as well, I’m more interested in how many players who don’t have an XBox bought this game for their PC.

16

Multiple gamertags on the same console will inflate the showcase and speedzone numbers.

Blizzard Mountain is well liked here and overall I find the game to be fantastic. Any minor bugs or cosmetic details leave room to improve in the future but the balance between sim and arcade play is spot on IMHO. That alone weighs heavier than dashboards or floating cars in the festival. I’m hoping the Horizon series continues to get better. FH3 is my personal favorite of all time and I go way back, waaay back.

When does Turn 10 generally release sales numbers?

17

The PC version has many issues that turn pc racers away.
Wheels with half broken functionality, wheels not supported, multiple input devices not recognised, framerate issues, CPU load issues… the list goes on.

Basically the platform that the game is built on for the PC (UWP) has rediculous limitations that pc gamers have not had in over a decade, it’s stupid and it is the sole reason why the game is rated so poorly on the windows store.

18

Nice job with this analysis, Breyzipp!

1 Like
19

Just thought this might be an interesting statistic to add in, using the figures you have provided and referencing the support sections of the game to compare the difference.

percent of players posted on the xbox one support section: 0.37%
Percentage of players posted on the PC support section: 9.5%

Xbox one support numbers seem very good, PC support numbers are not so good

20

I have been waiting for forza to realize that they can port their games to PC… I’ve waited so long that I didn’t even think that PC was an option! That’s right, I bought the XBOX version not knowing that the PC version existed. I can’t be the only one.
But now I know and knowing is half the battle.