Forza Horizon 6 Review: The Game That Woke Up Our Xbox Series S

The Xbox Series S has been sitting on our TV unit for the better part of eight months, powering on exactly twice — once to watch Netflix after the Smart TV refused to update its firmware, and once because my son pressed the button by accident. That changes today. Forza Horizon 6 dropped on May 19th, and within fifteen minutes of the Japan map loading for the first time, I knew the dust era was officially over. This is a 10/10 — not a conditional one, not a “for racing fans” one, but a flat, unequivocal perfect score for what Playground Games has delivered here.

Ad

Forza Horizon 6 – Xbox Series X|S (opens in a new tab)

The game that finally justifies dusting off your Xbox. Japan's open world, 500+ cars, seasonal events.

Japan was always the setting Horizon fans whispered about — the rumours were out there for years, the fan-made concept maps circulated endlessly on Reddit. The reality surpasses every one of them. From the moment you’re dropped into the festival grounds outside Kyoto and the cherry blossoms are drifting past your windscreen in slow motion, you know this is different. Playground Games didn’t just make Japan a backdrop. They made it the point.

🗾 The Map: A Japan Worth Getting Lost In

The Horizon 6 map is divided into five major regions, each with its own visual identity and driving character. The urban sprawl of Tokyo offers narrow, neon-lit alleys and elevated expressways where you’re threading a Nissan GT-R between taxi cabs at midnight. The Kyoto & Nara corridor is rolling bamboo forests, ancient temple approach roads, and wide ceremonial avenues flanked by stone lanterns — gorgeous in daylight, haunting at dusk. The Fuji highlands give you the sweeping mountain passes that define Japanese automotive culture: the Hakone switchbacks, the broad vistas from altitude, the way your car’s exhaust note bounces off the treeline.

Then there’s the Okinawa coast — the festival’s beachside hub, where the vibe shifts entirely to sun, sand, and absurd tropical supercars — and the Hokkaido snowfields unlocked after the first seasonal event, adding a completely different texture to the map. Five regions, five completely different driving personalities. It never gets old.

What strikes you after a week of play is how useable every corner of this map is. Horizon 5 in Mexico had vast stretches of desert that were technically impressive but felt empty to drive through. Japan has no dead zones. Every path leads somewhere interesting, every back road rewards exploration with a hidden barn find or a photo opportunity that actually makes you stop and take the shot.

Ad

Logitech G923 Racing Wheel for Xbox (opens in a new tab)

If you have one of these, Forza Horizon 6 is transcendent. Force feedback through Japanese mountain passes is something else.

🎮 The Driving Model: Finally, This Good

Forza Horizon has always occupied a comfortable middle ground between arcade and simulation, but Horizon 6 tips the balance in a way that feels genuinely new. The tire physics overhaul is real and immediately perceptible — there’s actual progressive grip behaviour now, a sense that the car is talking to you through the controller, telling you when the rear is about to step out and when you’ve found the limit. On a Logitech G923 wheel, this becomes something close to transcendent. Even on a standard Xbox controller, the haptic feedback and trigger resistance in Impulse Triggers translate enough of that tactility to keep every run engaging.

The Rewind system is as generous as ever, which matters for accessibility. Our six-year-old has been navigating the Okinawa coast in a pink Mazda MX-5 for two evenings running, rarely frustrated, constantly excited. The assists scale beautifully — full manual sim for the petrolhead, full assist arcade for the child who just wants to go fast and look at the cars. Both can coexist in the same living room, and that’s not easy to pull off.

⚡ Xbox Series S vs Series X: Know Your Level

Let’s address the elephant in the room. The Series S is the budget box — 1440p capable, no disc drive, smaller SSD, less raw GPU grunt than the Series X. In Forza Horizon 6, the game runs at 1080p/60fps in performance mode, and it is completely fine. The image is clean, the frame rate is locked, and the experience is indistinguishable from a great racing game running on a great console.

Yes, the Series X gets 4K/60fps and a visibly richer draw distance. But in motion, at pace, drifting through Tokyo at night with the rain effects bouncing off the asphalt? You are not thinking about resolution targets. The load times via the NVMe SSD — even the smaller one in the Series S — are fast enough to feel like a modern console. World streams seamlessly. Seasonal events load in under twenty seconds. After eight months of the console collecting dust, the hardware earns its keep here.

Ad

Xbox Series S Console (opens in a new tab)

Still the most affordable way into the Xbox ecosystem — and Forza Horizon 6 proves it can still deliver.

That said, if you’re buying a new Xbox specifically for Forza Horizon 6, the Xbox Series X is where the Japan map truly shows what it was built to do. At native 4K/60fps, the neon reflections on wet Tokyo tarmac, the cherry blossom density in the Kyoto highlands, and the Mt. Fuji snowline textures are a different visual league entirely. The Series X also carries a larger SSD — world streaming is even smoother, and the disc drive future-proofs you. It outsells the Series S for a reason: most buyers pair it with a 4K TV, and on a 4K panel, Forza Horizon 6 is genuinely one of the most beautiful games available anywhere. The Series S is fine. The Series X is where this game lives up to its own ambitions.

Ad

Xbox Series X Console (opens in a new tab)

The premium Xbox — 4K/60fps in Forza Horizon 6 is a different visual league. If you're buying new specifically for this game, the Series X is the one to get.

🚗 The Car Roster: 500+ Reasons to Stay

The launch roster sits at over 500 cars, and the Japanese bias is immediately apparent. The JDM catalogue has never been this deep in a Horizon game: proper Kei cars rubbing shoulders with Skylines from every generation, the full Toyota GR lineup, both generations of the NSX, the iconic Mazda RX-7 in its definitive FD form, and a curated Mitsubishi collection that will make any late-nineties teenager misty-eyed. The European and American contingents are well represented, but Japan gets the hero treatment here, and rightly so.

The Auction House and Car Pass system return in refined form. Livery sharing is more accessible than ever — within a day of launch, the community had produced Japan-themed wraps, anime-inspired liveries, and a frankly inexplicable number of sports-car-turned-police-cruisers. The creative ecosystem around Forza’s livery editor remains one of gaming’s unsung highlights.

🌸 Seasons: The World That Changes Around You

The Seasons system — rotating through spring, summer, autumn, and winter weekly — is where Horizon’s long-term engagement lives. Spring brings sakura showers and wet tarmac that makes every corner treacherous in the best way. Summer’s typhoon events turn coastal roads into chaos. Autumn’s fallen leaves carpet the Kyoto routes in copper and amber. The Hokkaido winter map transforms the highlands into a proper rally-cross track. Each season unlocks exclusive cars and the Horizon Festival Playlist — a structured set of events that rewards consistent play without demanding it.

For dads with limited gaming windows, this system is perfect. You don’t need to complete everything. Even an hour on a Tuesday night will check off enough playlist items to feel productive, and the world looks different enough each week to keep the return trip interesting.

👨‍👧 Family Fit: The Surprising Winner

I didn’t expect Forza Horizon 6 to become a family game. It has. The free-roam experience — no pressure, no timers, just the map, your car, and wherever you want to go — turns out to be exactly what a six-year-old wants to do on a Saturday afternoon. We’ve done “tours” of the Kyoto region at low speed, hunted for the goats that apparently live near the Fuji base camp, and discovered that the Okinawa beach promenade at sunset is genuinely one of the most beautiful things our TV has displayed.

The Horizon Life online component — passive multiplayer, where other players populate your world as ghosts unless you opt into convoys or rival events — means the world never feels lonely, but you’re never dragged into competitive pressure either. It’s the right kind of online for family gaming.

The Horizon Festival’s photo mode deserves a mention here too. My son has started requesting specific cars in specific colours so he can stage them against the bamboo groves in Kyoto — he’s seven, and he’s curating a virtual car photography portfolio. That’s the kind of unexpected family win that no spec sheet predicts.

The broader point is that Japan’s geography works for families in a way that Mexico’s sheer scale didn’t always manage. Mexico is vast and initially overwhelming — choice fatigue sets in faster, and agreeing on a destination before someone loses interest is harder. Japan feels curated: cities give way to mountain passes, mountain passes open to coastal expressways, and each transition is compact enough that you can pick a spot and actually reach it before anyone needs a snack break. For evening co-op cruises with no competitive agenda — just exploring and listening to the radio — that pacing is significantly better suited to how young car enthusiasts actually play.

Road trip mode also benefits from the map’s relative compactness. If you haven’t tried it as a genuine family activity — not racing, just point-to-point exploring with full narration toggled off — Horizon 6’s Japan is the best argument for it in the series.

Is Forza Horizon 6 worth buying in 2026?

Absolutely. It is the best entry in the series and one of the finest open-world racing games ever made. The Japan setting alone justifies the price — and if you’re on Game Pass, this decision is already made for you.

How does Forza Horizon 6 run on Xbox Series S?

Very well. The Series S runs it at 1080p/60fps in performance mode. In motion, at pace, the visual difference versus Series X is essentially imperceptible. It’s a great experience on the budget console.

Is Forza Horizon 6 suitable for kids?

Yes, from around age 6. No violence or inappropriate content — just cars, open roads, and an enormous world to explore. The rewind feature and full driving assists make it approachable for young players.

Does Forza Horizon 6 have local co-op?

Not in split-screen. Online convoys let you cruise together on separate consoles, but there’s no local multiplayer on the same TV — a recurring Horizon blind spot.

Is Forza Horizon 6 on Xbox Game Pass?

Yes, day one on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. It’s the best value play in gaming right now — the game alone would justify a month’s subscription.