Forza Motorsport was released just a few days ago, and while the game did not fail to impress critics, scoring 84/100 on Metacritic, it received plenty of negative reviews from users on Steam.
While Forza Motorsport excels in the visuals department, the game faced criticism for poor optimization and slow progression. Such drawbacks have led to the game losing popularity, and it is currently found below the top 30 most-played Xbox games.
Why it matters: The latest entry marks the return of sim-racing for the Xbox franchise after several years, but the reception has not lived up to the anticipation.
While the game has been out for less than a week, it is nowhere to be found on the list of most-played Xbox games. At the time of writing, Forza Motorsport is the 34th most-played Xbox game.
This is a surprising result since games like Starfield are still high on the list, with the RPG recently being found in the third spot. Like Microsoft’s other games, the racer was released on Xbox Game Pass.
However, this has not been enough to catapult it to the upper positions. Even Forza Horizon 5 is currently more popular than the IP’s latest offering, suggesting that fans have not found it too enjoyable.
Apart from Xbox, Forza Motorsport’s concurrent player counts are also disappointing on Steam.
The game peaked at less than 5K concurrent players, which is a stark contrast to Forza Horizon 5, which had around 80K concurrent players at release.
Admittedly, the latter is a more casual-friendly racer, which gives it an inherent advantage over the latest simulation-focused entry. However, we believe this is still a disappointing result for one of Xbox’s most anticipated releases of 2023.
A poor release like Redfall also managed to peak at over 6K players on Steam, highlighting that Arkane Studios’ worst release has outdone Forza Motorsport on the platform.
While these statistics are certainly disappointing, we believe they are not indicative of the game’s overall quality. Aside from performance issues, Forza Motorsport is a solid racing game that delivers an exciting return to one of Xbox’s oldest IPs.
We hope to see the game rising in popularity soon, as it has a lot of potential for growth with continued support.
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[News Reporter]
Abiyan is on track to complete his Computer Science bachelor’s degree. His enthusiasm for writing and gaming motivates him to keep readers and gamers updated with the latest information from the industry. In his free time, Abiyan enjoys playing Dota 2 and Rocket League. Abiyan has also been cited in reputed websites such as Kitguru, Comicbook, GamingBible, Eurogamer and Gamingbolt.
