$120 Still Couldn't Stop Horizon 6 From Selling Big?

According to Steam data cited in the article, Forza Horizon 6's $120 premium Deluxe edition already has 153,000 active players, and its early-access peak reached 178,000 concurrent players. With the game's global launch set for May 19, the edition that unlocks four days early has already climbed to No. 2 on Steam's top sellers chart, behind only Subnautica 2. The point is larger than one successful launch: as GTA6 gets closer, the industry's debate over whether AAA prices will rise beyond the long-standing $60 to $70 norm is heating up again.

What stands out is not just the scale, but what players are paying for. These people bought the $120 version out of pocket specifically to get in four days early. That says more than a routine preorder bonus ever could. In this case, Forza Horizon 6 has enough pull that a large group of players were willing to pay a substantial premium simply to start sooner.

Racing games are not usually sold on character arcs, but players still build emotional ties with a series. By the time a franchise reaches its sixth main entry, people are not only buying cars and a map. They are also buying familiarity, trust, and the sense that they already know what kind of experience this game will deliver. That trust helps explain why a $120 barrier did not shut out the core audience.

Still, there is an uncomfortable implication here. The article argues that the industry could read this as proof that if a top-tier game is strong enough, publishers can keep pushing prices upward. AAA games have long treated $60 to $70 as the standard range, yet some ordinary players have already said publicly that even $80 is beyond what they can comfortably accept. Against that backdrop, the strong sales of Forza Horizon 6's expensive edition look like another argument for the idea that broader price increases may gradually become normal across the business.

That is also why GTA6 keeps coming up in the conversation. Rockstar still has not officially announced its final price, but expectations remain high that it could break past the traditional $70 ceiling. The reasoning is not baseless. The market has already shown that if anticipation is high enough and early access is attractive enough, a large number of players will pay first, even if they are still hesitant in theory.

As buying advice, the split is fairly simple. If you were always going to play at launch, and you care a lot about early access, then the Deluxe edition's value proposition is direct and easy to understand. If you are budget-sensitive and do not urgently need the extra content, the standard edition is the better fit. A lot of players already find $80 awkward territory, let alone $120, and impulse purchases at that level can leave the worst aftertaste.

In the end, Forza Horizon 6 selling so well at the high end does not prove that all players accept higher prices. It proves that high-quality games have stronger pricing power. Those are not the same thing. Players may be willing to make exceptions for a few favorites; that does not mean they are ready to support the entire industry raising prices together.