May 9, 2025 by Rhys Elliott

Xbox dominated PlayStation’s top 10 games by copies sold in April, as Forza Horizon 5 overtakes 1.4 million copies on PS5

April is usually a quiet time of year for PlayStation players. Usually. Things were a bit different in 2025, boasting a new JRPG franchise that’s an early GOTY contender, PlayStation’s biggest Xbox release to date, shadow drops, and revitalised old classics.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: owing to Microsoft’s M&A frenzy over the past decade, Xbox is now selling more copies of games on PlayStation than PlayStation itself.

Xbox’s off-platform strategy is now accelerating. In addition to its already released Xbox experiments on PlayStation, last month saw the launch of Indiana Jones (the quickest Xbox-to-PlayStation port to date) and heavy hitter Forza Horizon 5.

Despite officially launching on PlayStation for just two days in April (seven for early access), Forza Horizon 5 was April’s #2 game by copies sold on PlayStation, with 837.3K sold.

Here’s the top 5 games by copies sold on PlayStation in April:

Xbox is now — for all intents and purposes — a first-party publisher. And it’s among the biggest in the world, already dominating the PlayStation ranking. Xbox accounts for a nice 69% of copies sold in the top 5.

In addition to Forza Horizon 5 in April:

• Minecraft sold just shy of a million copies on PlayStation in April: Hype from A Minecraft Movie helped Xbox shift 978K copies in April (up almost double from 527.1K in March), moving the Microsoft-owned game to #1 on PlayStation.
• Oblivion Remastered came in at #4 with 637.2 million copies sold: The shadow drop attracted plenty of PlayStation players. Most of them (73.2%) have also played Skyrim on PlayStation, pointing to Skyrim’s legacy being a major driver in the game’s success.
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle sold over 150K copies: While it didn’t rank in the top 10, Indy’s 151.1K copies sold helped it take the #18 spot in April.

Fed up with inaccurate data and unresponsive dashboards? Click here, and we’ll show you the most accurate data in the biz.

Forza Horizon has now sold 1.4 million copies on PlayStation after a week

Xbox’s releases on PlayStation have been a mixed bag so far. Sea of Thieves blew the others out of the water with almost two million sold on PlayStation so far, but more niche games like Pentiment are struggling to make a splash.

So, where does Forza Horizon 5, one of Xbox’s biggest games, fit in? Our data shows that it’s selling faster than even Sea of Thieves by a significant margin. Here’s the launch-aligned data for copies sold on PlayStation:

As you can see, after eight days, Forza Horizon 5 sold 1.4 million copies and is selling 2.1x faster than Sea of Thieves (657.3K).

Forza Horizon 5 is also selling over 10 times faster than Indiana Jones on PlayStation — a game that is actually selling copies faster on PlayStation than on Steam and Xbox, thanks to its Game Pass inclusion.

Forza’s undeniable success so far highlights that there was always a gap for a more arcadey open-world racer on PlayStation. After all, Alinea data shows that almost 60% of Forza Horizon 5 players on PlayStation have played The Crew 2 too.

Xbox’s war of attrition towards becoming a third-party publisher is nearing its end, as shown by the shrinking window between its Xbox and PlayStation releases.

Forza Horizon 5 is almost four years old at this point, and its PS5 port has almost instantly netted over $70 million in revenues for Xbox on top of the game’s huge success on Steam (almost $250 million based on 6.2 million copies sold) and value add for Game Pass subscribers.

On that note, our data shows that the Steam price for Forza Horizon 5 dropped to $30 on Steam the day it went into early access on PlayStation, helping to give the game a small revenue jump on Steam to coincide with its PlayStation launch.

We expect Forza Horizon 6 to launch on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC simultaneously and do gangbusters for Xbox.

The off-platform launches will also help Xbox combat Game Pass’ cannibalisation of premium revenues — alongside other efforts like paid early access, increasing Game Pass prices, and gating day-one launches to the highest tier — Ultimate — on console.

Halo, Gears, Forza, and the like are now third-party franchises, and gamer access to these franchises — and Xbox’s bottom line — will be better for it.

The rest of the top 10 is a mixed bag of old, new, and revitalised

The remainder of the top 10 featured the usual mix of sports titles, evergreen classics, and RPGs galore.

On the sports side, FC 25 managed to sell 713.4K copies on PlayStation in April to become the platform’s #3 game by copies sold.

While the success of Forza is part of the reason FC from #2 in March to #3 in April, it’s worth noting that the comp was a huge month for FC 25 copies sold, thanks to a 70% discount that helped it sell 1.1 million copies in March (50% more than in April).

Other sports games also continued to perform well, with NBA 2K25 (#7) selling 360.1K — up from March’s 284.4K, thanks to a discount — and MLB The Show 25 (#9) selling 260.9K copies.

RPGs galore in the PlayStation top 10

Assassin’s Creed Shadows was the month’s #5 best-selling PlayStation game by copies sold, with 358.3 million, bringing its PlayStation 5 copies sold to just shy of 1.7 million.

Shadows’ lukewarm launch is showing a moderate long tail, which is still likely not the success story Ubisoft needs on its lead platform. It seems that Forza Horizon 5 is on track to outsell Shadows soon.

However, another French studio — a less likely one — launched a game in April that seems to have a longer tail. New IP Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 came in at #6 with 354.3K copies sold.

Word of mouth is spreading, and Expedition 33 added another 200K copies sold on PlayStation in the first week of May alone (now 560K+ on PlayStation and 1.1M+ on Steam).

Our recent article shows that it’s selling faster than JRPG releases in iconic franchises from revered studios. The Oblivion Remaster’s shadow drop two days before the launch of Expedition 33 clearly didn’t hurt the game too much.

Oblivion wasn’t the only remaster in the ranking — nor was Minecraft the only game to benefit from an adaptation. The Last of Us Part II rounded out the top 10 with 222.0K copies sold, slightly above Hogwarts Legacy and Split Fiction.

HBO’s The Last of Us season 2, based on TLOU2, launched on April 13, reigniting interest around this series. To capitalise on this, Naughty Dog released a complete edition package of the first 2 games on PlayStation 5 on April 10, contributing to the second game’s performance.

It also launched TLOU2 on Steam on April 3 to give curious newcomers an entry point into the series (maximising revenues from the show). It has sold almost 500K copies on Steam so far.

Interestingly, Xbox-owned games accounted for 48% of copies sold in the PlayStation top 10 in April. Xbox achieved this with just three games (PlayStation itself only had two in the top 10, with TLOU2 and MLB).

With big AAA releases like Doom: The Dark Ages and Elden Ring: NightReign, anticipated smaller releases like Revenge of the Savage Planet and Monster Train 2, and the continued success of recent releases and the usual suspects, the May 2025 PlayStation ranking already promises to be an eventful one.

Looking for our Steam top 10? Reach out here to get it now, or stay tuned on our blog next week for a write-up!