Microsoft got a whole lot of people to play Halo and Forza

Microsoft has been able to get people to try out its games. During the company's earnings call on Tuesday, the CEO said that 20 million people had played the games. It speaks to the pull of the just-download-it-and-giving-it-a-whirl model, since those numbers will include people who played for a few minutes and didn't stick around.

Both games are free to play and can be played on the Game Pass subscription service, which has 25 million subscribers according to Microsoft.

It's hard to imagine they would have drawn in as many players if they had to pay upfront. The data shows that the biggest game in the series is likely to be Horizon 5. 24 million people had played the previous entry in the series, according to Microsoft. The game came out over two years after the game, and over a year after it hit Game Pass. The 18 million people who tried it in less than four months. The studio behind the Gran Turismo series said that the most popular entry in the series had sold just under 15 million copies.

With over 20 million Spartans joining us so far, we’re thrilled to announce that #HaloInfinite is the biggest launch in Halo franchise history!

Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the next step in this great journey. pic.twitter.com/d4EIsvWYVr

— Halo (@Halo) January 25, 2022

The series as a whole had sold 81 million copies in its 20-year run before the game launched, and the 20 million people who tried it made for an interesting data point. It's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison given that the free-to-play aspect of the game is something that previous games had to be purchased for. There could be people who tried a game and bounced before they were convinced to spend money on skins.

It seems like Microsoft has succeeded in getting people to try the game.

The free-to-play model has been proven to be successful before; games like Call of Duty: Warzone have seen massive success. They are also playing in a larger pool, which is available on consoles, PCs, and mobile devices. Now that most of its exclusives don't have a mandatory buy-in, Microsoft needs to keep those people around and figure out how to make it pay off.