Dear reader,

Thank you for humouring my utter nonsense last Friday.

What was meant to be a short notification alerting you to the fact that I would be releasing the newsletter on Tuesdays instead of Fridays, escalated into a long and winding joke that probably went on for far too long.

Huge thanks to Boosted Media, Jardier, DaveCam, Heusinkveld and Williams F1 Team for playing along and providing me with your daft quotes.

I hereby declare that all future newsletter content will be nothing but 100% serious industry journalism…

This week, I’ve had loads of fun researching Japanese car culture. If like me, this is something you’ve always been aware of but haven’t been able to dive into as deeply as you’d like, make sure you read my little piece on JDM at the bottom of the newsletter.

Get the kettle on, it’s time for a read.

Tom Bunten, Traxion.gg

The headline last week was without doubt the Forza Horizon 6 gameplay reveal, I have a think about what it says about racing games and… anyone noticed Japan is having a moment?

The team at Traxion worked through the night and across the weekend following the release of the latest Forza Horizon 6 Official Gameplay Teaser Trailer last Thursday to dive into what we can learn from the reveal- turns out, it’s at least 13 things!

The video lifts the curtain on a vibrant Tokyo cityscape, punctuated with a giddying collection of car culture classics. The sidepod camera angles of cars drifting on pink-littered roads between Sakura trees; the quick pans through the bamboo forest and the off-road buggy races across the Japanese plains all illustrate a game that is leaning into its location in a meaningful way. Features-wise, we’re hit square in the face with progression systems, car meets, drag races, traffic, customisable garages and even some sort of iracing-arcade-style estate builder - there is seemingly a lot to do.

Everything about this Teaser Trailer says “not just a driving game”.

At this stage there’s a lot of conjecture and not-a-few assumptions, so it’s difficult to eek out what may or may not be important or influential for the racing game industry as a whole.

But I’m going to eek anyway…

FH6 finally fixes the limited 180 degree steering animation that irked Forza Horizon players of the past, increasing it to 540 degrees.

Could this be paving the way for a greater focus on steering wheel support to draw in the growing number of wheel & pedal owners looking for new ways to enjoy their rig?

I know that previous Forza Horizon’s have been compatible with wheels & pedals. However, the community has been largely critical of the FFB feel of Forza Horizon on a wheel, and the mis-matched animation of the in-game driver’s hands not aligning with your own as you turn your own wheel must be jarring to say the least.

When I have friends visit my house, inevitably, they’ll start dropping hints about my sim rig and before too long, I’ve loaded up Wreckfest and they’re absolutely loving life. Wreckfest is not a hardcore, brake-drum simulating esports title. But that doesn’t mean BugBear Entertainment didn’t spend time and effort making the FFB experience enjoyable.

Arcade games are about fun, and what’s more fun than playing (yeh, I said it…) with a wheel and pedal set?

Forza Horizon 6, unlike it’s sister-title, Forza Motorsport, is clearly focused on providing fun, car-culture, exploration-driven gameplay moments and a dopamine-heavy rewards system.

I personally have never played Forza Horizon franchise, but for the first time, I’m excited to dive into this world.

With cross-play and cross-save available across PC and console versions, I think Forza Horizon 6 will be the biggest racing game of 2026...

In 2025 and 2026, across PC and consoles we’ll have had early access launches or full releases of:

Every one of these games is set in Japan.

And why not?

Japanese car culture is not about one predominant discipline.

Scandinavia has rally, Europe has circuit racing, the US has its ovals.

Japan is more about an amalgamation of multiple joyous uses of automotive machinery, shared with other likeminded car fanatics.

JDM, or Japanese Domestic Market, is about tuning and aesthetics.

If you play any game, and I mean any game, you’ll know that levelling up and customising your character is a central pillar of most gameplay loops.

Tuning your car, applying decals, stickers, body kits and so on is the perfect progression system for modern gaming.

Buy car - race car - tune and customise your car - race car - tune car… etc etc.

This is the epitome of Japanese car culture.

Likewise, Japan as a stage couldn’t be more appealing to a creative game studio:

Touge Racing is all about racing through gorgeous mountain passes, along winding, narrow roads. It’s about sending your car sideways, often in tandem, around hairpins that hurtle you down hills and through woodlands. As a spectacle, it’s hard to beat.

Wangan Racing swaps mountains for skyscrapers, trees for neon billboards and woodland critters for traffic. Based on the Shuto Expressway system, the challenge here is focus and endurance. Drivers weave through traffic as the city lights blur into continuous streaks of colour, narrowing the vision and heightening the senses at 300kph.

Kaizo leaves behind anything stock and elevates the everyday to compete against the exotics. Honda Civics leaving Mclaren Artura’s in their wake in defiance of the aesthetic hierarchy and status quo of road legal cars.

Combine all of these environments and disciplines, sprinkle in some car meets and a banging soundtrack and you have Japanese Car Culture in all its brash, vulgar, chest-puffed-out glory.

There’s a defiant beauty in the juxtaposition between the serene, almost noble backdrop of the pink-petalled trees and quiet modesty of Japanese architecture with the garish, neon machines, gargling and screaming along the roads.

Gaming is a rare opportunity in life to create worlds without boundaries. One is not obliged to adhere to rules or preconceptions. Creative teams need not be restrained by convention or tradition. It’s total freedom.

But, if I were a racing game that had to opt in to a set of boundaries, rules and preconceptions; conventions and traditions, I’d choose Japan.

Last week I asked a silly question at the end of a silly newsletter. In a newsletter in which I announced the decision to move from a Friday release to a Tuesday release, I asked which day you wanted the release on.

To my shock, 92.3% of people played along and voted for Tuesday! Thank you!

That’s right! The Traxion Control podcast is back! Each week, Tom, John and I will be diving into a short 20-30 min catch up about all the goings on in sim racing. Much like the newsletter, the aim is to release an episode every week on a Tuesday.

Catch the next episode at 5pm today (if today is still Tuesday… and you like in GMT) on Spotify or YouTube 👇

I’d like to showcase the best of our community’s projects and success stories each week. So if you have anything you’d like me to showcase here, please let me know by email: [email protected]

This week, I’d like to thank everyone who messaged us with their questions for this week’s Traxion Control podcast in our Discord, on our socials and on our YouTube Community Post.

Sending in your questions not only gives us something to talk about, it gives us something to think about. Often we take insights about the general consensus in the world of sim racing by identifying trends on what you guys ask us.

So thank you, and keep them coming!

Got a question for our editorial team? Perhaps a point you’d like to make? Maybe even you’ve spotted a mistake in this issue?

Send your submissions by email to [email protected] and we’ll include them at the bottom of each edition.