As you know, 2005's Forza Motorsport marked the beginning of the Forza series, and it was popular right from the start, though not yet a massive franchise. However, when it expanded with the spin-off Forza Horizon in 2012, things really took off. Today, it's Horizon that defines Forza as a brand, and Forza Horizon 5 reached over 50 million players last autumn.
Despite this incredible success, the analytics firm, Alinea Analytics, now expects Forza Horizon 6 to get off to an even better start. This time, the journey takes us to Japan, where a cross-section of the country has been recreated with plenty of iconic landmarks, massive cities, villages, and temples to drive around. This is clearly appealing, as they write:
"Our estimates show that Forza Horizon 6 has already raced past 500K copies on Steam over a month before launch."
Add to that 3.3 million wishlisters, and all in all, this makes the game already "the best-selling Forza title on Steam pre-launch, with a whole month to go." This means that if "Playground Games nails it, we're looking at a new benchmark for the racing genre," and they don't stop there with their projections but conclude:
"Based on comparisons to other known quantities and major sequels, pre-sales this high point to Horizon 6 clearing 2 million units on Steam within its first 24 hours."
Something that will further boost the game's numbers is that both China and Japan are reportedly significantly more interested in the game than they have been in previous instalments, which means they seem to have found a new customer base.
On May 19, which is almost exactly one month from now, Forza Horizon 6 launches on both PC and Xbox Series S/X (it's coming to PlayStation 5 at a later date) and then we'll see if Alinea Analytics' data holds up, but there's certainly a lot pointing toward a really strong launch.