Racing game addicts are buzzing right now. It's been centuries since a new Forza Horizon title graced the scene for Xbox and PC. Okay, it hasn't actually been 100 years – Forza Horizon 5 , the current chapter in the Horizon series, launched back in 2021. That's an eternity in video game years, especially when rumors have been flying about the next Horizon game being based in Japan. Considering 99% of Horizon players online do nothing but drift, Japan is basically the holy grail for Forza fanatics.
And it's finally happening. Microsoft made it official on January 22 during Developer_Direct 2026, revealing Forza Horizon 6 would take place in Japan and launch on May 19 of this year. The announcement came with a bunch of photos, a teaser video, and too many social media posts to share here. What we didn't expect, though, was Toyota's new GR GT being featured so prominently in the promotional material.
The automaker is planning a rebrand of its performance cars that basically makes GR its own brand. The fact that Horizon 6 was revealed not long after the GR GT has us wondering if there was a deeper Toyota / Microsoft relationship all along here. That's pure speculation on our part, but the timing is certainly neat.
In any case, the production GR GT isn't expected to go on sale until late this year as a 2027 model. That means the first taste anyone outside of Toyota will have of this new performance car will come through Forza. Of course, it's not really a first drive. Even if Forza was a dialed-in, hardcore racing sim, it's still a digital interpretation of the real thing.
But developers have become very good at capturing the visuals and the sounds of cars for the digital world. We'd be lying if we said we weren't interested in giving the GR GT a virtual rip around Japan. Even in the watered-down arcade physics of the Forza Horizon world, we're keen to see it outside of press photos and hear its throaty engine.
"The 2025 GR GT Prototype is really special to us because it's our hero cover car, but it's also a car that you drive as part of what we call the Initial Experience. It's the first 10 minutes of the game where you get to drive the car, almost as a prelude." You might also find this interesting: See here
No comments:
Post a Comment