Forza Horizon 5 is now 2025’s top-selling new PS5 game, racing past copies sold for huge first-party PlayStation titles

Plus, updated Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox numbers for titles like Monster Hunter Wilds, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Expedition 33. And a quick analysis of why Xbox is transitioning from console.

Your eyes do not deceive you. This IS a bonus edition of the Alinea Insight newsletter, and it’s a big ‘un.

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Forza Horizon 5 is 2025’s top new PS5 game by copies sold

Xbox ported Forza Horizon 5 to PS5 at the end of March 2025, almost four years after its original release on PC and Xbox consoles.

Last week, Forza surpassed 3 million copies sold on PS5, overtaking Monster Hunter: World. This means Forza Horizon 5 is 2025’s best-selling new game on PlayStation consoles – for copies sold, anyway.

Forza’s most recent sale (-25% to $45) was the engine that drove it past the coveted three-million mark on PS5.

Across Xbox One and Series X|S, more than 45.5 million players have checked out Forza Horizon 5 – mostly via Xbox Game Pass. It’s an Xbox franchise to be reckoned with.

But Forza Horizon is also an off-platform force to be reckoned with for Xbox revenues. On top of the three million copies sold on PS5, the Steam version has sold another 6.5 million.

As Xbox’s off-platform strategy continues, we expect to see Forza Horizon 6 launching on PS5 on day one. By then, Xbox would have fully completed its transition to third party. More on that at the end of the newsletter 👀

Let’s dive into the rest of the top five, which includes a bunch of fantastic RPGs:

Various RPGs round off the rest of our top 5 for PlayStation’s top new games

Let’s dive into the data a bit:

• Monster Hunter Wilds (2025’s #2 new PS5 game by copies sold) has sold 2.9 million copies on PS5. It’s shifted a further 6.2 million on Steam. The PC version is outselling its console versions almost 2:1, and marks a huge success in Capcom’s push onto PC. MH: Wilds has generated well over half-a-billion dollars this year. It’s worth noting that Monster Hunter has actually generated more revenue on PS5 than Forza, despite selling fewer copies. This is mostly due to Monster Hunter’s $70 price point (versus Forza’s $60 on PS5, with intermittent sales below $50).

• Assassin’s Creed Shadows has sold around two million copies on PS5, 650 K on Steam, and reached a further 1.1 million players on Xbox (many due to Ubisoft+). These numbers are decent, but Shadows has not generated much profit, with revenues at over $180 million. Ubisoft’s CEO recently let slip to shareholders that Shadows’ budget was over $115 million. We expect it’s a lot more than that. Nice try, Yves. Anyway, Shadows has likely broken even now after four months on the market but – sadly – hasn’t been the silver bullet Ubisoft needed.

• Elden Ring Nightreign has sold 1.4 million copies on PlayStation consoles this year – and another 2.7 million on Steam and 750 K on Xbox. That means this experimental PvE souls-like from FromSoftware sold almost five million copies across all platforms. On PlayStation, 84% of Nightreign players have played the original Elden Ring (versus 77% for Steam players). FromSoftware’s now-flagship franchise is thriving.

• Expedition 33, a turn-based RPG and the only new IP in the top 5, has sold 1.4 million copies on PS5 so far this year. Sandfall made the game Final Fantasy fans have been begging for (but never got from Square). Expedition 33’s success here speaks volumes, selling another 2.3 million copies on Steam on top of PS5’s 1.4 million. On PS5, Expedition 33 has sold almost as many copies as Metaphor: Refantazio and Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth combined. These are 2024 games from two iconic JRPG developers, with heavy ties to PlayStation as a brand, emphasising Expedition 33’s INCREDIBLE performance for a new IP.

As you can see in this Alinea Platform screenshot, Expedition 33 (green line) is selling more than games from iconic JRPG studios.

We expect the ranking to look a lot different by the end of the year, following the launches of FC 26, Borderlands 4, Black Ops IIIIIII (had to), and maybe a few surprises.

In fact, College Football 26 is already approaching 1.2 million copies sold on PS5 after less than two weeks, so that will probably dethrone Expedition 33 over the next month or so.

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Forza Horizon 5 has now sold more copies on PS5 than last year’s GOTY

Forza Horizon 5 is doing so well on PS5 that it’s even sold more copies than Astro Bot:

Some key takeaways from the above image:

• Forza Horizon 5 sold 2 million copies on PS5 after 25 days after launch (you might remember that Assassin’s Creed Shadows only just passed that milestone after four months)

• Death Stranding 2 has now sold a million copies on PS5 after 25 days on the market, but copies sold seem to be stabilising already. While it’s been a HUGE hit among critics, DS2’s eccentricity means its sales have come in below other PlayStation Studios titles – including Astro Bot. Still, it’s one of those franchises that has a long tail – it will continue to sell well over time, boosted by the PC port (likely Q3 2026), which will pull in a lot of Chinese players.

• Astro Bot passed two million copies sold roughly three months after its launch, getting a nice boost in sales from game-of-the-year chatter and its big win at The Game Awards 2024. It will pass three million by the end of the summer.

As you can see in the video below, again showing off the Alinea platform (🔌), Forza has now passed copies sold for Astro Bot and a slew of other recent PS5 first-party, second-party and timed-exclusive games titles:

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The reasoning for Xbox’s push to third-party is clear: Revenue, stagnating subscriptions, and losing the console war

The Steam and PS5 versions of Forza Horizon 5 alone have generated revenues of almost $400 million. The reasoning for Xbox’s off-platform push is clear:

• Game Pass subscriber number growth is beginning to plateau, with some growth coming from PC and cloud but barely any via console – even after Black Ops 6 launched.

• Publishers are struggling to sell games on Xbox versus PS5 – not only due to the smaller installed base but also because Game Pass’ value provision gives subscribers plenty of great titles to play. However, this has led some publishers to skip Xbox, including former second-party partner Moon Studios

• But Xbox games are selling – and selling in droves – off-platform. And all amid Microsoft’s strategy shift towards the generative-AI bubble trend 🫧

• Owing to lofty expectations for that segment, Xbox is now a bigger opportunity cost for Microsoft, which I suspect was a major driver in its decision to lay off thousands of Xbox workers. Solidarity with those impacted 🫶

As mentioned earlier, Xbox is currently transitioning from a console platform holder to a third-party publisher. And its next ‘‘console’’ won’t really be a console:

• Microsoft WILL launch another console-like gaming hardware product.

• But the next ‘‘Xbox’’ be a half-step towards a PC (or even fully a PC), a Trojan horse to get Xbox die-hards into the PC Windows ecosystem.

• Microsoft probably won't market the next Xbox as a PC, but in functionality, it will likely get closer than ever — a console that runs like a PC, integrates deeply with Windows, and supports cloud/hybrid gaming.

Xbox’s handheld is a PC in partnership with third-party OEM ASUS. It’s the next big step in easing its console fanbase towards Windows

In the end, decoupling flagship IP from consoles lets Xbox tap into PlayStation’s massive install base (and others’) to fund development cycles, subsidise Game Pass’ user saturation, and reach the masses as it transitions to its next phase.

The result is a diversified revenue portfolio: hardware revenues and subscription recurring revenue from loyalists, supplemented by a cut of full-game sales on ‘’rival’’ stores.

But Xbox as a console is dead – or at least dying, and is poised to be replaced by something more PC-like.

Over time, this strategy could position Xbox as the industry’s most resilient ecosystem across platforms, untethered from the risks of single-platform dependency.

Everything going on with Xbox right now shows that it's aiming to become the “Windows of gaming”, a universal layer underpinning play everywhere – portably, at home, and on every screen.

Whether or not that lofty long-term plan plays out remains to be seen, but it’s going to be an interesting few years – that’s for sure.

The last word (but not in an ominous way⚰️)

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