This kind of statements surprises me. Has anyone played the game yet?
Previous Forza Horizons have always scored really well and it's not like 5 is gutting everything that made the older games work. Seems like a safe bet.
Not sure where you get your information but it really hasn't, all of the historical data since it's debut is available here:
The top selling games on Steam by revenue for the week, updated every Sunday
steamdb.info
In 16 weeks it's appeared 6 times in the top 10.
My mistake; still though it's been a consistent seller on Steam. Not as much as a Sea of Thieves for them, but it does steady numbers regularly. And it's still had multiple chartings in the Top 10 which is pretty impressive for something in the racing genre, to my knowledge no other modern racing game's managed that on Steam.
We'll see, MS has only launched one AAA game since GP started and it only hit number 7 in NPD in it's first month then fell out of the top 20 in it's second and that was gears 5. There are more GP subs now too so that'll impact sales even more.
Well technically they've had two if you include FS 2020 and the definition for AAA stays traditional, referring to production values and scale (both things that game satisfies conditions for). I don't think using Gears 5 as a sticking point for GamePass adversely affecting sales works considering we have many more cases of games which have seen strong or in some cases even increased sales (on Xbox, let alone PC) even while in GP.
Outriders, MLB The Show '21, several indie titles, even some of Microsoft's own games like Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 4 (those two, particularly on PC where admittedly GP is tied to the shitty Windows Store) have all seen strong or in some cases increased sales while on GamePass. In that type of data, Gears 5 is an outlier.