Forza Horizon 6 is XBOX’s Biggest Steam Launch in History

Playground Games' open-world racer surpasses Halo Infinite to earn the highest peak concurrent player count for the publisher on Steam.

Posted By | On 19th, May. 2026

Forza Horizon 6_04

More than doubling the lifetime peak of Forza Horizon 5 on Steam during advanced access? Rookie numbers for Forza Horizon 6, which surpassed 273,000 concurrent players on the platform following the Standard Edition’s launch.

That’s impressive enough, but it’s also the biggest Xbox Game Studios launch on Steam, beating out the previous record holder, Halo Infinite (272,148). Keep in mind that the latter was for multiplayer, which was free-to-play. The next best is Halo: The Master Chief Collection (161,024), and to say that Playground Games’ latest completely outclasses its player count would be an understatement.

Of course, this is only on Steam. Forza Horizon 6 is also available for PC via the Microsoft Store and Game Pass, so expect the number of players to skyrocket in the coming days, especially when accounting for Xbox Series X/S. Thus far, advanced access has seen more than one million players according to the in-game leaderboards.

Check out our review for Forza Horizon 6, where we awarded it a nine out of ten. As the first entry in the series to venture to Japan, it focuses on the player as a tourist who races their way to the top of the Horizon Festival while discovering the country’s culture. To say that it succeeds on both fronts would be an understatement – check out our graphical analysis for more details.


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