Well, how the times have changed for Xbox, and that’s not talking about the never-ending business issues that clog up the timeline every other day, but in terms of who is top dog of the Xbox brand. If you asked a hardcore Xbox fan during the peak Xbox 360 years, one who truly would bleed green for their platform of choice, that the car game once viewed as a Gran Turismo ripoff would eventually overtake Halo and Gears of War as Xbox’s crown jewel, they probably would have laughed in your face, thrown a can of Mountain Dew at you, and gone right back to playing Halo 3. But here we are in 2026. Halo is going through an identity crisis, Gears of War feels trapped in limbo, and the arcade-focused spin-off of the sim racing Forza series has quietly become the most consistently excellent thing Xbox produces. That puts a lot of pressure on Forza Horizon 6. This is a series coming off what many people considered its peak, Forza Horizon 5, and its gorgeous recreation of Mexico. Fans spent years asking Playground Games to finally take the series to Japan, almost to the point where the idea became a meme. Expectations reached impossible levels. There was this feeling that, even if the developers eventually delivered the dream setting, the actual game could never live up to what people imagined. After spending around 80 hours with Forza Horizon 6, though, I can honestly say Playground somehow pulled it off. Even at the top of the mountain, this series still found room to climb higher. The biggest reason is the world itself. Japan is not just a cosmetic backdrop here. Playground clearly understood that if they were finally going to use this setting, they needed to fully commit to the