Big Xbox Series X Exclusive May Be in Trouble
Xbox Series X's big new exclusive isn't doing so well.
A new Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S exclusive may be in big trouble if some new data is any indication of the game's current health. It's been an up and down year for Xbox exclusives. 2023 was kicked off with the surprise stealth release of Hi-Fi Rush, one of this year's best games. This was then followed up by Redfall, 2023's biggest flop. After Redfall, came Starfield, which didn't end up being a huge critical success for Bethesda Game Studios and Xbox, but by most measurements it's been very successful. And this brings us to the latest major Xbox exclusive, Forza Motorsport, which seems to be stuck in neutral, largely due to major downgrades and performance issues hampering the driving sim.
The new racing sim is available on PC, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X, but unless everyone is playing it on Xbox consoles, then the game may be dead on arrival. Over on Steam, it's only managed to hit a peak concurrent player count of 4,703 players. That was 11 days ago. It's peak concurrent player count in the last 24 hours is only 3,247. These are bad numbers. And to put these numbers into context, even the aforementioned flop, Redfall, managed 6,124 concurrent players at its peak. To couple this, it has a "Mixed" user review score on Steam, with only 40 percent of 2,710 user reviews rating the game positively.
Now, it's possible the game is just really underperforming on Steam whilst doing really well on Xbox consoles. This is possible, and if the case, then the game may not be in as bad shape as it seems to be based on the information above. If the Xbox numbers aren't drastically better than this though, the game may be in big trouble. Considering its multiplayer and live-service elements, it needs way more players than are seemingly playing it right now if it wants to have a success post-launch life.
What's curious is the PC version of the game has an 83 on Metacritic. This is odd because the PC version is a mess. The Xbox version is better, but there are still plenty of issues with it as well, making its score of 85 odd as well. That said, it wouldn't be the first time critics and consumers have greatly different experiences.
H/T, Game World Observer.