Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 4 was one of the most impressive games we’d seen at E3 2018. Considering the competition present in Microsoft’s own conference, never mind the rest of E3 2018, that’s saying something. The open world racer has continued to impress with new features like dynamic seasons, Team Adventure co-op, and shared world racing with up to 72 players.
How has the response from consumers been in light of all this? According to Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg in conversation with GamesIndustry.Biz, pre-orders are tracking “well ahead” of what Microsoft expected. Furthermore, they’re ahead even of 2016’s Forza Horizon 3.
“So our expectation is that Forza Horizon 4 is going to be the biggest and best-selling Forza game that we’ve ever launched,” Greenberg said. “Currently, our pre-order tracking is well ahead of where we want and tracking ahead of where we were with Forza Horizon 3. So the early indicators are really good. And that’s before you get into the fact that this title will be in Game Pass, which will allow it to reach another set of gamers who may never have played or bought the game.”
As it stands, Forza Horizon 4 could be the sole reason – at least in terms of upcoming heavyweights – to own Xbox Game Pass, which retails for $10 per month. Will servers be able to handle such a large influx of players? That remains to be seen, but thankfully the game is still playable offline. Physical and digital sales will also be interesting so we’ll see how it all pans out when Forza Horizon 4 launches on October 2nd for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC.
