Forza Horizon 6 won't release in full until May 19, but over one million people have already taken to the driver's seat with the game's more expensive Premium Edition.
Day One reports that one of Forza Horizon 6's early-game mandatory events, called River Split Speed Trap, has a leaderboard tracking the performance of more than 1,191,886 players, according to a screenshot sent in to the outlet's Discord channel.
What makes those numbers kind of shocking is that Forza Horizon 6's Standard Edition doesn't come to Xbox Series X|S and PC until a few days time. Although players who are willing to dish out $120/£110 on the Premium Edition can jump into the open-world racer four days early and eventually get access to the game's two upcoming expansions - Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can instead spend $69.99/£59.99 on the more expensive version.
Despite those lux hurdles, well over one million people and counting reportedly decided to drop the extra cash and hit the road a little early in the game's virtual recreation of Japan.
Forza Horizon 6 also immediately beat Forza Horizon 5's Steam record with 130,000 concurrent players jumping in within hours of launch - that's since sped to a 178,000 player peak, which will likely stretch even higher once the barrier to entry gets cheapened slightly.
Xbox's premiere driving series has always been mammoth sales magnet, but hype seems to have reached a fever pitch online. Perhaps those stellar Forza Horizon 6 reviews pushed it over the edge - the game dethroned Pokemon Pokopia to become 2026's best-rated game of the year, after all.
