{"id":2507,"date":"2026-04-08T13:40:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=2507"},"modified":"2026-04-08T13:40:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:40:29","slug":"forza-horizon-6-preview-xbox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=2507","title":{"rendered":"Xbox\u2019s new era needs games like Forza Horizon 6"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The open-world racing game launches next month<\/a>, but I recently had the chance to play a preview version to get a sense of what to expect. Even with just a brief taste of the experience I came away impressed. The main shift with Horizon 6<\/em> is the setting: It takes place in Japan, and the map is absolutely huge<\/a>. More importantly, though, it\u2019s incredibly varied. One second you\u2019re blazing past skyscrapers in Tokyo, the next you\u2019re racing along tiny roads in the countryside. It felt like if I took off for a few minutes in any direction, I\u2019d find a completely new landscape. This encouraged me to go down side roads and head into the wilderness just to see what I\u2019d find.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As with previous Horizon<\/em> games, there is a light story; in this case you\u2019re a budding racer trying to work your way up through to the Horizon festival. You do that by completing events, like straightforward races down rain-slicked city streets and off-road courses on beautiful beaches. Sometimes you have to drift your way down a looping bridge. I spent some time doing these, of course, because that\u2019s how you progress in these racers. But like in the best open-world games I kept finding myself getting distracted. The core act of driving around in Forza Horizon 6<\/em> remains incredibly fun, and when you couple it with the diverse and sprawling map, well, it\u2019s easy to lose hours just exploring.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Obviously there is a lot of the game that I haven\u2019t seen. I\u2019ve only driven a handful of cars, mostly a Toyota Celica, and the real test of a world like this is if it remains interesting after dozens of hours of play. That\u2019s not something I can say is true of Horizon 6<\/em> just yet. But the fact that this is shaping up to be another excellent entry for the series is not really a surprise. While many big franchises have struggled under the Microsoft umbrella, either through disappointing entries or long gaps between releases, Forza Horizon<\/em> has steadily turned into Xbox\u2019s most consistent series. Forza<\/em> releases alternate between the more simulation-focused Motorsport<\/em> games and the arcade-y Horizon<\/em> releases, and the Horizon<\/em> games in particular always deliver.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But so far, Forza Horizon<\/em> has remained strong and consistent. It\u2019s even become a bestselling series on PlayStation<\/a>. And while the timing may be purely coincidental, the fact that Forza Horizon 6<\/em> is launching as the first major release since Xbox\u2019s leadership upheaval puts it in a position to represent this new era for the brand. From what I\u2019ve played, it\u2019s a good signal of what Xbox can be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Regardless of what happens with the next Xbox console<\/a> or the company\u2019s inconsistent multiplatform efforts, the Xbox brand needs big names associated with it. Microsoft gaming\u2019s new CEO, Asha Sharma, said as much when she first took over the role from Phil Spencer. \u201cWe must have great games beloved by players before we do anything,\u201d she wrote in a memo<\/a>. There are few better places to start than a new Forza Horizon<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The open-world racing game launches next month, but I recently had the chance to play a preview version to get a sense of what to expect. Even with just a brief taste of the experience I came away impressed. The main shift with Horizon 6 is the setting: It takes place in Japan, and the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45,47,284,691,41,405,692,1085,427,289,407,51,109,695],"tags":[688,402,1083,509,403,136,1084],"class_list":["post-2507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-ai-coding-assistant","category-ai-regulation","category-analysis","category-artificial-intelligence","category-entertainment","category-gaming","category-microsoft","category-openai","category-pro-ai-pacs","category-report","category-tech","category-technology","category-xbox","tag-analysis","tag-entertainment","tag-gaming","tag-microsoft","tag-report","tag-tech","tag-xbox"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}