No reviews. No benchmark tests. No hot takes from YouTubers who got early access. Forza Horizon 6 sits at #1 on Steam’s Top Sellers chart anyway.

Playground Games’ open-world racer isn’t due until May 18, 2026. Its Steam page shows exactly zero user reviews — 0 positive, 0 negative, 0% from 0 total. None of that has stopped it from claiming the #1 spot on Steam’s Top Sellers chart. Forza Horizon 6 also showed strong commercial performance in Valve’s weekly sales charts for late January, according to iXBT Games, despite facing criticism.

This is what franchise dominance looks like. Forza Horizon has spent the better part of a decade establishing itself as the gold standard for arcade racing, and the preorder numbers reflect a player base that isn’t waiting for consensus. They already know what they’re getting — or at least believe they do.

The $69.99 Question

The Standard Edition comes in at $69.99 / €69.99, with Deluxe at $99.99 and Premium at $119.99. Premium buyers get early access starting May 15, as reported by VGChartz.

That $69.99 base price plants Forza Horizon 6 firmly in the AAA tier that has drawn heated industry-wide debate. Players have pushed back against the $70 standard when titles ship unfinished or loaded with microtransactions. Forza Horizon 6 hasn’t launched yet, so the jury is out on both counts — but the preorder momentum suggests a significant chunk of the audience has already decided the price is acceptable.

Whether that trust pays off depends entirely on what Playground delivers on day one.

Japan, 550 Cars, and a New Progression Grind

The game takes players to Japan — a setting the community has requested for years. The map includes Tokyo, Mount Fuji, and the Daikoku car meet location, a real-world landmark iconic in Japanese car culture. Playground promises approximately 550 cars at launch, with cover cars including the 2025 GR GT Prototype and the 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser.

There’s also a reworked progression system. Players arrive as tourists and must earn their way into the Horizon Festival through the Horizon Qualifiers and the Horizon Invitational, collecting wristbands along the way. Two new companions — Mei, a Japanese car builder providing cultural context, and Jordy, a motorsports enthusiast — guide the campaign, according to the official Forza news page.

A Race Customizer lets players tweak Drivatar counts up to 11, plus season, weather, time of day, and more. It’s the kind of player-facing flexibility that suggests Playground has been paying attention to how its community actually plays.

Under the Hood

Technically, Playground says it has made “significant improvements to the custom PC engine that delivered excellent performance in Forza Horizon 5, pushing graphical fidelity and quality further than ever before,” per the official Steam announcement. Ray-traced reflections and global illumination, uncapped framerates, ultrawide support, and compatibility with NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 3 and 4, and Intel XeSS 2.1 are all confirmed.

Steam Deck and SteamOS Linux support is locked in, with cross-save across every platform — including the PlayStation 5 version arriving later in 2026. Day-one Steam Deck compatibility and a PS5 port in the same release window is a notable look for a first-party Xbox title.

What Playground Needs to Prove

The Forza Horizon formula is so polished at this point that the biggest risk isn’t a bad game — it’s a stale one. Every entry since Horizon 3 has iterated rather than revolutionized, and there’s a ceiling on how many times you can sell “bigger map, more cars” before returns diminish.

The Japan setting and wristband progression suggest Playground knows this. The question is whether these changes are cosmetic layers on the same chassis or genuine evolutions of the gameplay loop. The Race Customizer is a promising sign — giving players granular control over their experience is exactly the kind of feature that extends a racing game’s lifespan past the initial hype window.

Racing sims have maintained a quiet but steady presence on Steam. Assetto Corsa and iRacing serve the simulation hardcore. Forza Horizon owns the arcade-accessible end. Nothing else in that space commands this kind of preorder momentum, which makes Forza Horizon 6 less a competitor and more the category definition.

The Verdict

Forza Horizon 6’s #1 Steam position with zero reviews tells you everything about brand trust and nothing about game quality. That verdict arrives May 18.

Playground Games has earned the benefit of the doubt. It hasn’t earned a free pass.

Sources