Playground Games is finally ready to leave the Xbox One behind. Forza Horizon 5 arrived a year after the launch of Microsoft Gaming's new-gen home console – a compelling system showcase that remains one of the best Xbox Series X games. For as excellent as Horizon 5 is, I have long wondered what Playground could achieve were it able to circumvent the bottleneck created by needing to support decade-old hardware. With the release of Forza Horizon 6 on May 19, fantasy will become reality.
"I think you can't overstate it. It's a sea change," says design director Torben Ellert, as we discuss what the new-gen focus unlocks for the studio. "The interesting space that you get [to innovate] is from where you suddenly have headroom in systems that you didn't have previously."
