Playground Games dropped the official PC system requirements for Forza Horizon 6 ahead of its May 19 launch, and the short version is that the studio has done a reasonable job of keeping the floor accessible despite the game’s scale. A GTX 1650 or AMD RX 6500 XT gets you running at 1080p Low (Ed: You mean to say “potato”?). A GTX 1650 from 2019 running a 2026 open-world racing game with a city described as five times larger than Forza Horizon 5’s Guanajuato is a genuine achievement in optimization, and it sets a decent precedent in a market where minimum specs tend to be fiction.
The full four-tier spec breakdown from Playground Games:
Minimum (1080p Low/Potato): Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, GTX 1650 / RX 6500 XT / Arc A380, 16GB RAM, SSD, Windows 10 22H2+.
Recommended (1440p High): Intel Core i5-12400F or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT, 16GB RAM, SSD.
Extreme (4K Ultra): Intel Core i7-12700K or AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, RTX 4070 Ti or RX 7900 XT, 32GB RAM, SSD.
Extreme with Ray Tracing: Same CPU targets, but GPU jumps to RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB RAM.
The RAM minimum of 16GB applies across all tiers, which stings in the current market where that spec will cost you considerably more than it did 6 months ago. The mandatory SSD requirement is new for the Horizon series on PC, driven by the density of the Japan map and Tokyo’s size. Spinning rust simply won’t stream assets fast enough.
On the PC, features like DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation is in for RTX 50 Series cards, standard DLSS Frame Generation for RTX 40 Series, and DLSS Super Resolution are supported for all RTX cards. AMD FSR 4 is supported for RDNA 4 owners, FSR 3 for older Radeon cards. Intel XeSS is listed as supported, allegedly. Ray-traced global illumination is available alongside RT reflections, with the full RT experience requiring that RTX 5070 Ti or equivalent.
Steam Deck is listed as a supported platform with full cross-save progress, and the game should comfortably run at playable frame rates given the minimum spec bar sits well below Steam Deck GPU performance levels.
Forza Horizon 6 launches May 19 on PC via Steam and the Xbox App, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass on day one. A PS5 version is coming later in the year. Premium Edition owners get early access from May 15.
The Japan setting — featuring 550+ cars, a massive Tokyo that spans multiple distinct districts, and a touge racing mode — has been the series’ most requested location for years. Based on the spec sheet alone, Playground appears to have built something that will actually run on the hardware most players own, which after a rough few months for PC gaming affordability, is worth noting.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →I'm still unsure if I'll get this one. 4 was good and 5 was meh.
Already put down my money for the big boy edition. I've gotten many hours of gameplay starting at 4.
I've also pre paid for both owlcat studio games coming because ive enjoyed their product for more than the price of entry thus far.
I'm headed towards 400 hours in FH5 and I also have a lot of time in FH4, but I played 5 before 4 so most of my time was spent in 5. But just cuz I liked 4 and 5 doesn't mean I will like 6. Like the previous two games, I'll have to get hands-on first. And 2nd, gonna need it to come way down in price. I paid $20 for FH4 with both expansions, so when FH6 gets to that point, then I'll bite.
HUB analysis
https://www.techspot.com/article/3125-forza-horizon-6-vram-gpu/
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FH4 car handling felt a bit stiff to me. Didn't try FH5. FH3 was the only game I played on my Xbox One S for a long time. The only game that I actually got the DLC for (Hot Wheels) and regretted paying for that. Wasn't as much fun.
I have like 600 hours in to FH5. Just haven't had the itch so I'll wait till I do.
Yeah. That's the crazy thing. For a game that's just cars roaming around a huge map and almost nothing else (I did the races for a few days but then just gave up), it's a crazy time sink. It kept me from trying out any other game on Xbox One S. And since I had a 4K HDR TV, a lot of time was spent marveling at the beautiful HDR effects especially during night scenes.
Now this is original. Maybe something like this was in FH3 but I didn't get around to finishing it.
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FH5 was the one that had a lot of crazy spectacle races and special scenarios. I heard that aside from the mech race, FH6 didn't go as crazy with those races as FH5 did.
Maybe, just maybe it hasn't been done before because it makes zero sense? This actually makes me angry, because I can imagine the corporate boardroom meeting where they decided to put it in. It doesn't make the game any better. It is just a key jangle that any reasonable person should see right through.
Actually when I was looking at footage of the game to decide whether to buy it or not, this was the video that made up my mind to a definite NO. When I first saw it I was convinced it must have been made by someone fooling around with AI, it is so stupid and out of place in a racing game.
Hey, there's a T-Rex and godzilla race in there too! :D
It's like the races in FH5 where you had to race against stuff like jet-skis, a plane, a giant hovercraft (that might have been FH4, my memory is fuzzy), or even a f*cking train, among other things. When they decided to have FH6 take place in Japan, no doubt they were like "hey it's Japan so we gotta throw a giant mech in there!" The story has all kinds of ridiculous nonsense in it. I remember an event in FH5 where I was in the Warthog from the Halo series and the environment was changed to be Halo-esque, and they had Halo-related music and sound effects, and they made it look like I was on a battlefield with laser fire and explosions and sh1t.
That sounds cool!
At least those things exist in real life, so it's not that immersion breaking.
Well, having done something similar before doesn't make it any less dumb in my eyes.
All I want is a good arcade racing game where the focus is on the racing and driving and not on stupid spectacles and nonsensical challenges.