Forza Horizon 6 made a big splash at last night's Xbox Developer Direct, with an impressive showing that finally gives us a glimpse at Playground's vision for open-world Japanese racing. It's launching soon too — with a May release date on Xbox — but folks are starting to spot that the game's DLC is looking rather expensive this time around.
Indeed, head over to the Xbox Store and you can see that the game's Premium Upgrade — which contains early access and is often paired with an Xbox Game Pass subscription for pre-release access — costs £60/$60. Here in the UK, that's the exact same price as the Standard Edition of the game (in the US the base game is $70), which is a notable markup on Forza Horizon 5's £40/$50 upgrade, and other comparable Microsoft titles.
That slightly better pricing of the base game in the UK does make the upgrade look more expensive over here than it probably does in the US, but $60 is still a huge ask for day one DLC. Of course, this upgrade does contain two major expansions, which the FH series has always delivered on since the Forza Horizon 3 days, but those will come months down the line; the main launch day purchase is for that four-day early access window (and some other small welcome packs and such).
We're seeing fans begin to cotton onto this here in the Pure Xbox comments, on Reddit/social media and the like, and we're intrigued to see how this all shakes out for Microsoft and Playground Games. If you have a strong feeling you'll enjoy those big two expansions then this Premium Upgrade could still be worth it, but otherwise, we'd probably recommend waiting and just grabbing the Standard Edition of Forza Horizon 6 - either standalone or playing it via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.