Half a million copies sold. Zero people have played it. That’s the Forza Horizon 6 pre-order campaign in a nutshell.

Playground Games’ open-world racer is sitting at #4 on Steam’s Top Sellers chart as of May 2, with no user reviews — because the game doesn’t launch until May 18. According to Alinea Analytics estimates reported by WCCFTech, pre-sales have already crossed 511,000 units on Steam alone, generating over $28 million in gross revenue. That makes it the franchise’s best-selling entry before launch, with over two weeks still on the clock.

The price tag? A full $69.99. Nobody blinked.

This is pure franchise momentum. Forza Horizon 5 was a juggernaut, and Playground Games has earned enough trust that players are handing over seventy bucks based on a logo, a setting — Japan this time, with over 550 licensed cars — and a track record. The pre-order spikes tell the story: the first gameplay footage drove a surge, and the achievement list reveal on April 13 moved another 22,000 units in a single day. The community celebrated the removal of the Battle Royale-style Eliminator mode from the achievement list and welcomed a more solo-friendly completion path. Players are pre-ordering a game and cheering its patch notes before it ships.

Over 3.3 million users have it wishlisted. Alinea Analytics projects 2 million units sold on Steam within the first 24 hours of launch. Those are numbers most studios don’t hit in a month.

Could any other racing franchise pull this off right now? EA Sports FC 26 is #6 on the same chart — close, but that’s annualized sports territory, where pre-orders are practically subscription behavior. Forza Horizon 6 is moving units on reputation in a genre that hasn’t had a serious challenger since the last Forza Horizon.

The pre-order era was supposed to be dying. Consumers were supposed to be wiser. Maybe they are — and maybe Playground Games has simply become one of the few studios worth trusting sight unseen.

Sources