Forza Horizon 3 hits 2.5M copies sold, pushing Forza series above $1B (update)

The Forza series has come a long way: By the end of 2016, the beloved racing franchise had topped the $1 billion mark in lifetime sales at retail, developer Turn 10 Studios announced today.

Forza Horizon 3, the latest entry in the nearly 12-year-old series, catapulted the franchise above that milestone with sales of 2.5 million units. The game helped maintain Forza’s spot as the best-selling racing franchise of the current console generation, according to NPD Group data from November 2012 through January 2017.

It’s worth pointing out that Microsoft and Forza haven’t had much competition lately. Sony has only released one Gran Turismo game in that time frame, 2013’s Gran Turismo 6 on the PlayStation 3. Electronic Arts found success with 2012’s Need for Speed Most Wanted, but the franchise has been in a funk since then. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the statistic takes Nintendo’s Mario Kart series into account — since the December 2011 debut of Mario Kart 7, the company has sold more than 23 million copies between that game and 2014’s Mario Kart 8.

“Since the beginning, Forza has combined stunning graphics, racing’s leading simulation engine, and an emphasis on fun and accessibility,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. “With the Forza series, Turn 10 Studios has built the world’s largest racing community. We couldn’t be more proud of their success.”

Playground Games’ Forza Horizon series, which began in 2012, takes the racing off the track and onto the streets of an open world. It’s a spinoff of Turn 10’s mainline Forza Motorsport franchise, which started on the original Xbox in May 2005. Microsoft has released a total of six Forza Motorsport games, and if the company’s recent trend of every-other-year titles is continuing in 2017, it stands to reason that we’ll see Forza Motorsport 7 this fall.

Update (Feb. 14): A Microsoft representative told Polygon that the NPD Group’s “best-selling racing franchise” statistic for Forza does indeed take the Mario Kart series into account. We’ve edited the article to reflect this.