"Japan Awaits" is the whole pitch, and three months on Forza Horizon 6 lists 26 add-ons beneath it

The official site introduces this game in two words. “Japan Awaits.”[1] Forza Horizon 6 moves an open-world racing series onto a map of Japan, and the opening line of its Steam description asks you to drive more than 550 real-world cars across that landscape and become a racing Legend at the Horizon Festival[2]. Open world here means the map is one continuous space you can drive anywhere in, rather than a menu of closed circuits.

The reason to write about it now is the calendar. A May release is still selling in September. Checked directly on 3 September 2026, it sat at 22 on Steam’s global top sellers and 35 on the Korean chart, with the discount field at zero percent in both storefronts[8][9]. The weekly aggregate puts it 43rd in most-played against 44th the week before, and the concurrent count at the same moment was 21,388[10][12]. What gives those numbers weight is that the launch discount has ended.

A paid car went up the same day. The 1983 Nissan Skyline 2000 Turbo RS, $2.99[5]. Every figure below was read on 3 September 2026 from the Steam store, Steam’s APIs and Xbox’s own pages. Where a value moves within a single day, that is noted alongside it.

Tourist first, Horizon Legend later

What you do in this game is drive. The Steam description sets the starting position as a tourist: you explore a world built around Japanese music and culture, then build a Valley Estate, acquire homes, and display a collection in customizable garages[2]. Tokyo enters the series as its largest city to date, on what the store text calls the densest Horizon map yet[2].

It is not a solo game by default. The Steam category list carries single-player, multiplayer, online PvP and online co-op together[3]. Car Meets, an EventLab creation tool and a shared building mode called Horizon CoLab all appear in the same description[2].

Steam files it under three genres: Racing, Simulation and Sports[3]. The Simulation tag does not mean punishing handling. The accessibility fields list adjustable difficulty and playable without timed input, and gamepad-recommended sits next to a keyboard-only option[3].

$69.99, then two tiers up, then twenty-six more lines

The base game is $69.99. Read on 3 September 2026, the US and Korean listings both show a zero percent discount[3][4]. Two tiers sit above it: Deluxe at $99.99 and Premium at $119.99.

The gaps between tiers resolve into arithmetic. Deluxe costs $30.00 more than standard, and the Car Pass it contains sells alone for $29.99[5]. Premium costs $50.00 more than standard. Buying standard and then adding the same contents through the Premium Upgrade costs $59.99, so choosing Premium at the outset saves $9.99[5].

That Premium Upgrade holds six items: VIP Membership, Welcome Pack, Time Attack Car Pack, Car Pass, Italian Passion Car Pack and the two post-launch expansions[5]. Bought separately those six total $119.94. At $59.99 the bundle is half that, which makes piecemeal purchasing the expensive route for anyone who wants more than one item.

The Car Pass is the clearest illustration. It costs $29.99 and its description promises one new car a week from 19 May, thirty in total[5]. The same cars sold individually run $2.99 each, so thirty of them would come to $89.70. Holding those two numbers next to each other explains the pricing model faster than any other pair.

The individual car list keeps growing. Sixteen $2.99 car packs were registered between 18 May and 3 September, at roughly weekly intervals[5]. The newest entry went up today. Alongside them sit the Welcome Pack at $4.99, the Time Attack Car Pack at $9.99, the Italian Passion Car Pack at $4.99 and a Treasure Map at $2.99[5].

The two large expansions have no price. Both individual listings sit in a coming-soon state, and the only number attached to them is the $49.99 Expansions Bundle, whose own description states that the dates shown are provisional[5]. Anyone buying that bundle is paying ahead of knowing what arrives or when.

What $19.99 buys is a multiplier, not a car

The VIP Membership is the most arguable item in the catalogue. It costs $19.99 once and never expires. The first effect its description names is a two-times credit boost on race rewards[5]. Credits are the in-game currency for buying and modifying cars.

Around that sit three VIP-exclusive Forza Edition cars, a weekly bonus Super Wheelspin, cosmetic items including a crown flare, an emote and a horn, and the keys to a Tokyo city house with a customizable garage[5]. The cosmetics change nothing mechanical. Three cars are three cars. The first line is the one that matters.

Doubling credits sells time rather than appearance. Two accounts running the same race fill their garages at different rates, and the difference is $19.99. Microsoft does not hide this; the store copy calls the membership a permanent ticket to earning more rewards[5]. Set against a free-to-play gacha, the ceiling is at least fixed. You pay once and nothing recurs.

No loot boxes turned up. Across the store page and all 26 add-ons there was no randomised purchase and no published odds table[2][5]. One gap remains, though. The weekly bonus Super Wheelspin attached to VIP is an in-game randomiser, and no official page states what it can hand out or how often. What is sold is the spin, not the prize, which places it outside the disclosure most storefronts require.

Korea’s rating panel makes an odd pair on the same listing. The game carries an all-ages classification with violence given as the single content reason, while the interactive-elements field directly above it names in-app purchases and online interaction[2]. Anyone buying on the strength of the age rating should read the two lines together.

167 GB, and a connection that cannot drop

Four things are worth checking before installing: storage, connection, account and language.

Storage is 167 GB, identical in the minimum and recommended columns, with an SSD required[3]. That is large even beside the 60 GB to 130 GB figures other releases on this site ask for. RAM is 16 GB in both columns. The minimum CPU is an Intel i5-8400 or Ryzen 5 1600 with a GTX 1650, RX 6500 XT or Arc A380; the recommended step is an i5-12400F or Ryzen 5 5600X with an RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6700 XT or Arc A580[3]. The GPU bar is genuinely low. The 16 GB of RAM and 167 GB of SSD are where people will fall out.

Connection is not optional. The notice at the foot of the Steam page states that a persistent internet connection is required, and the network row in the system requirements asks for broadband[2][3]. Solo driving stops when the line drops. The same notice makes Microsoft account registration and acceptance of the Services Agreement and Privacy Statement conditions of play, with a further account link needed for cross-platform play[2].

Language support is generous. Twenty-three languages are listed and ten of them carry full voice acting, Korean and Japanese among them, along with both written forms of Chinese[3][4]. Japanese audio in a game set in Japan is expected. Korean audio in a release this size still is not.

The first ten hours split along what you bought

Downloading is the first obstacle. On most home connections 167 GB takes an evening. Microsoft account sign-in comes next, and a failure there stops you before the title screen[2].

Inside, you begin as a tourist[2]. The early hours are mostly map-opening: driving between events, adding one car at a time, working out which roads you like. The variable is how fast credits accumulate. A VIP account earns double from the same race[5]. A Car Pass account receives every car released since 19 May in one delivery at the moment of purchase[5]. An account that skipped both earns its cars.

So the first ten hours are a different game depending on the receipt. Without extras the garage fills slowly, which makes each new car an event. Starting from Premium means having plenty to choose between on day one. Neither is obviously better. The $69.99 base game opens the same Japan and the same list of 550 cars either way.

Game Pass subscribers have an extra move available. The game is in the catalogue, so ten hours can be spent before any money changes hands. Xbox’s 5 May post listed it for 19 May across Cloud, Xbox Series X|S, Handheld and PC, and marked it as available on Game Pass from day one[7]; the Korean Xbox page still carries the same subscription messaging today[6].

Where the Steam reviews disagree with each other

Read on 3 September 2026, Steam’s user reviews total 96,464 with 79,540 positive, which the store renders as Very Positive[11]. That is Steam counting votes from its own buyers, not a score borrowed from a publication.

Split by language the picture shifts. Korean sits at 1,158 positive out of 1,435 and is the only one of the five to reach Very Positive. Japanese reads 776 of 1,051, Traditional Chinese 2,567 of 3,380 and Simplified Chinese 14,459 of 20,183, all three landing on Mostly Positive[11]. In a game set in Japan, the Japanese sample staying close to the Korean one in size while sitting lower in ratio is the part worth noticing. The reason is not something these numbers establish, so it stays unwritten.

Three kinds of player are well served. Anyone who drives for its own sake comes first, since almost nothing here obliges you to follow a story. Game Pass subscribers come second, because they can judge before paying. Third are players who want a release of this scale with voice acting in their own language.

Three others should hold off. Anyone without 167 GB of SSD to spare, anyone on a connection that drops or who wants something playable offline, and anyone tired of a store page that keeps growing. That last one is not taste but operating model: a paid car has appeared almost every week since May, and nothing suggests next week differs.

That is as far as today’s evidence goes. Three questions stay open: what each expansion costs and when it arrives, whether the $49.99 bundle stays cheaper than the parts once those prices exist, and whether the PS5 version the official site dates only to 2026 actually lands this year[1][5].

Sources

[1] Playground Games. Forza Horizon official site. Accessed 3 September 2026.

[2] Valve. Forza Horizon 6 Steam store page. Accessed 3 September 2026 for the Korean rating and interactive-elements fields.

[3] Valve. Steam app details API, appid 2483190, Korean storefront. Accessed 3 September 2026.

[4] Valve. Steam app details API, appid 2483190, US storefront. Accessed 3 September 2026.

[5] Valve. Steam app details API, all 26 DLC entries queried individually, beginning with Premium Upgrade appid 4520360. Names, prices, release dates and descriptions read one entry at a time on 3 September 2026.

[6] Microsoft. Forza Horizon 6 on Xbox. Accessed 3 September 2026.

[7] Xbox Wire. Coming to Xbox Game Pass: Forza Horizon 6, Mixtape, Subnautica 2, and More. Published 5 May 2026, accessed 3 September 2026.

[8] Valve. Steam global top sellers chart. Accessed 3 September 2026.

[9] Valve. Steam Korea top sellers chart. Accessed 3 September 2026.

[10] Valve. ISteamChartsService weekly most-played API. Accessed 3 September 2026.

[11] Valve. Steam user review API, appid 2483190. Queried for all languages and separately for Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese on 3 September 2026.

[12] Valve. ISteamUserStats current player count, appid 2483190. Returned 21,388 on 3 September 2026.