Nine minutes of raw Forza Horizon 6 gameplay dropped today as part of IGN First's March coverage, and instead of generating hype, it's generating one very specific question: where are all the cars? The footage follows a Saleen S7 through rural countryside and into Tokyo itself, and you can practically count the other vehicles on one hand. On highways that should theoretically be choked with traffic, you'll spot two, maybe three cars. In the city sections, same story.
This is Tokyo. One of the most densely populated urban areas on the planet, a city where gridlock is practically a cultural institution. Playground Games chose Japan specifically because its roads are distinctive. The irony of recreating that world and then leaving it almost completely empty is not lost on the people watching.
The comments under the video have zeroed in on this fast. Fans are calling it a "dead city" and pushing back on what they see as a fundamental atmosphere problem. The concern isn't just aesthetic; weaving through traffic is one of the core thrills of the Forza Horizon formula. That tension between speed and density, the split-second decision to cut inside a lorry on a mountain road, is part of what makes the series work. Strip that out and you're left with a very pretty but very lonely drive.
To be fair to Playground, this is pre-release footage and traffic density is exactly the kind of thing that gets tuned in the final weeks of development. It's also possible the demo was deliberately cleared out to make navigation easier to follow for a first-look video. But that's a generous reading, and it's the kind of thing the studio should probably address directly before the discourse calcifies.
What We Actually Saw
The footage itself is uncut, which is genuinely useful. Previous Forza Horizon 6 reveals leaned heavily on developer commentary and curated snippets, so seeing nine straight minutes of open-world driving without a presenter talking over it tells you more about the game's feel than any trailer has. The world looks sharp. The countryside-to-city transition is smooth. The Saleen S7 sounds appropriately aggressive.
But Pure Xbox put it plainly: the video "falls a little flat." No races, no activities, no real sense of what the game's structure looks like in motion. And the footage runs at 30fps with heavy motion blur, which is a strange choice for a series that has always sold itself on speed. Whether that reflects the game's current performance state or just a capture decision is unclear.
Forza Horizon 6 launches on Xbox Series X|S and PC on May 19, 2026, with Premium Edition Early Access starting four days earlier on May 15. A PlayStation 5 version follows later in the year. Playground has the rest of March to fill with IGN First coverage, and they're going to need some of that footage to show Tokyo actually feeling alive.
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