Forza Horizon 6 Advanced Access Kicks Off With Over 170,000 Concurrent Players

Forza Horizon 6 officially launches on May 19, but advanced access for buyers of the $119.99 Premium Edition kicked off on May 15, and it appears as though, despite a recent leak of the game ahead of the official launch, gamers have come out in droves to play the new open-world racing game. On Steam alone, Forza Horizon 6 crossed 172,000 peak concurrent players just seven hours after the advanced access launch. The game has also reached second place in Steam’s official Top Sellers chart, falling just short of taking away Subnautica 2’s number-one spot following its immensely successful launch just a day before Forza Horizon 6’s advanced access.

[Editor’s note: Our in-depth performance review of Forza Horizon 6 is now live]

This being Steam data, it gives us little insight into the performance of the game beyond blatant speculation, but it’s safe to say the real total peak player counts are significantly higher than the 172,000 players on Steam. Some gamers will have bought the game on the Microsoft store for PC, and others may have purchased it on their Xbox Series consoles. The high player counts do suggest that the official launch will be a big one. Forza Horizon 6 has already surpassed the peak concurrent player count of Horizon 5 by more than 100%. Since Horizon 6’s predecessor launched, it hasn’t managed to garner more than 81,096 concurrent players, and player counts for that game were down to around 15,000 peak concurrent players by the end of the game’s second month on the market. How Horizon 6 fares in terms of player retention remains to be seen, but there