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Ever since Forza's first foray into open-world racing back with Horizon in 2012, it's gone on to define the series, outpacing the original mainline Motorsport series. That's certainly not slowing down with Forza Horizon 6, which takes the racing festival to Japan after over a decade of fan requests. I was already on board when Playground Games revealed FH6 would return to the wristband career mode, but when PC Gamer's Shaun Prescott gave it a test drive earlier this month, describing its Japan map as the "series' best yet", I'm more hyped than ever.
And I'm not alone in that, clearly, as gaming market data firm Alinea Analytics suggests that Forza Horizon 6 has already sold over 500,000 copies on Steam alone so far—and it's still a month away from launch. That equates to nearly $30 million in gross revenue before considering console sales, according to their data. As for launch day on May 19, it suggests that it'll race past two million sales on Steam within its first 24 hours. For context, Forza Horizon 5 bagged over 10 million players in its first week, a record for Xbox Game Studios, so it's already making headway.
One interesting tidbit is that over 50,000 players pre-ordered the game the very day it became available on Steam. The Horizon series has earned its reputation over the years, so I'm actually not too surprised to see so many pre-order it right away, no questions asked.
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Then there's the question of Japan, which Xbox has historically struggled to reach. Despite being set in Japan, currently only about 6% of Steam wishlists come from the region, and ironically, that's a big improvement for the series. That's in large part because it's now available on PlayStation—Forza Horizon 5 released on PS5 nearly four years later, and it's sold over five million copies already. You can question Xbox's recent multiplatform publishing approach all you want, but there's certainly an argument that it works.
The point is, Forza Horizon 6 is going to be a huge hit—and seemingly already is. Meanwhile, the mainline track racing series, the latest being 2023's Forza Motorsport, is running on fumes. In fact, last year, a former developer claimed the Motorsport series died in Microsoft's cuts where up to 50% of Turn 10's staff had been let go.
In other words, it seems like the more successful spinoff is now the future of the series. As much as I love Horizon and its consistent improvement with each game, I can't help but feel bitter that Motorsport is more or less gone. But hey, racing around Japan in a kei truck is undeniably awesome.
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