Xbox Game Studios Announces Player Counts for Its First-Party Games

Xbox Game Studios Announces Player Counts for Its First-Party Games

• Xbox boasts impressive player numbers for first-party games like Forza Horizon 5 and Sea of Thieves, with potential for growth in 2024.
• Xbox’s move to bring smaller first-party games to other platforms like Switch and PS5 has sparked debate within the gaming community.
• It remains to be seen if player numbers for upcoming titles like Hellblade 2 and Avowed will reach the same levels as established hits like Forza Horizon 5.

Xbox Game Studios has flaunted extraordinary lifetime player numbers for some of its most successful first-party games, including Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, Sea of Thieves, and more. Xbox’s first-party portfolio is set to grow even larger this year, with several major titles planning to release, like Ninja Theory’s Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 in May, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Avowed in the fall.

Recent Xbox developments have seen the platform holder commit to bringing four of its smaller first-party games to competing platforms like the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5. The controversial move has sparked heated debate among the Xbox audience and wider gaming community about whether Xbox is planning to fully shift to a third-party publisher, and what that would mean for Game Pass and Xbox consoles. For now, Xbox has indicated that only the following four games will make the jump to other platforms: Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and Grounded. Obsidian’s Pentiment is the first to make the leap to Switch and PlayStation, with the other three to follow suit in March and April.

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On Twitter, trusted industry insider Klobrille posted a graphic highlighting the impressive player counts of some of Xbox’s biggest and most successful titles of the past several years. Topping the list is 2021’s runaway racing success Forza Horizon 5, sporting a massive 37 million lifetime players. Following right behind is Rare’s open-sea service title, Sea of Thieves, with 35 million players. Several other first-party Xbox games land in the 20-25 million player range, such as Grounded, Minecraft Dungeons, and Halo Infinite. Bethesda’s latest single-player RPG, Starfield, came up with 13 million players, and Ghostwire: Tokyo, the lowest title in the graphic, boasts 6 million.

Xbox First-Party Player Count Numbers:

• Forza Horizon 5 – 37 Million
• Sea of Thieves – 35 Million
• Minecraft Dungeons – 25 Million
• The Elder Scrolls Online – 24 Million
• Halo Infinite – 20 Million
• Grounded – 20 Million
• Fallout 76 – 17 Million
• Starfield – 13 Million
• Microsoft Flight Simulator – 12 Million
• State of Decay 2 – 11 Million
• Ghostwire: Tokyo – 6 Million

As Xbox continues to grow its ecosystem, in part by releasing some of its smaller titles on other platforms, it’s very possible that these already impressive player numbers could jump even higher. Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, two Xbox games with smaller player counts, could wind up on a list like this in the future if they perform well enough on Switch and PS5. Judging by the fact that single-player titles like Starfield and Ghostwire: Tokyo have some of the lower numbers in the graphic, it’s tough to imagine Xbox’s 2024 single-player games like Hellblade 2 and Avowed reaching 20+ million territory, at least during their first few years on the market.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle could be a single-player Xbox game that potentially ends up breaching that 20-25 million player mark, as it’s Xbox’s first major partnership with a popular film IP. Fans will have to wait a bit longer to learn about its release date, though, perhaps at Xbox’s confirmed June showcase. Additionally, it’ll be interesting to see if Sea of Thieves takes the number one spot, surpassing Forza Horizon 5, when it comes to PS5 on April 30.

Xbox Series X

Microsoft’s ninth-generation console, the Xbox Series X is a powerful machine that can support 4K resolution and 60 fps, depending on the game. Released alongside the Xbox Series S, the Series X has a Custom AMD Zen 2 CPU, a Custom RDNA 2 GPU, and 16 GB of RAM.

BrandMicrosoftOriginal Release DateNovember 10, 2020Hardware VersionsXbox Series XOriginal MSRP (USD)$499Weight9.8 LBS