Forza Motorsport peaks at less than 5,000 concurrent players on Steam, with only 44% positive reviews

Forza Motorsport is the latest first-party release from Microsoft and Xbox Game Studios. However, the game’s launch was far from a massive success.

Launched on October 10, Forza Motorsport is a reboot for the sub-series in the Forza franchise and the first Motorsport release since 2017’s Forza Motorsport 7. The game received positive reviews from critics, with an average Metascore of 85 (Xbox Series X|S) and 84 (PC).

Player reception, however, hasn’t been warm so far. According to SteamDB, Forza Motorsport only peaked at 4,703 concurrent users (CCU).

For comparison, Forza Horizon 4 and 5, also available on Steam, had a peak CCU of 40.3k and 81k respectively. Of course, the Horizon brand is more causal and aimed at a wider audience, but the initial metrics for Forza Motorsport are still pretty weak for a big AAA release.

Concurrent player count for Forza games on Steam

At the moment of writing, the latest game from Turn 10 Studios has a “Mixed” rating on Steam, with only 43% of the 975 user reviews being positive. On the US Xbox Store, the game currently holds an average score of 2.5 stars out of 5 based on 869 reviews.

Many players criticized the car leveling system, comparing it to grind typical for free-to-play mobile titles. When it comes to the PC version, it seems to be poorly optimized with numerous performance issues. “Changing settings requires restarts. On each restart the game recompiles shaders for 5 minutes. I’ve had about 20-30 crashes in 35 hours and 2 BSOD,” one user wrote.

Forza Motorsport is the weakest Microsoft gaming release of 2023 in terms of concurrent players. It lags behind Minecraft Legends (5,322 peak CCU) and Hi-Fi Rush (6,132), not to mention the failed Redfall (6,124). The only first-party game from Microsoft that performed well on Steam this year is Starfield, which peaked at 330k concurrent players.