Forza Horizon 6's Neon Controller Is Gorgeous Chaos

Translucent cyan blue shell. Hot pink accents. Volt green squiggles tracing the outlines of Japanese mountain roads. Silver metallic D-pad. If you looked at Xbox's new Forza Horizon 6 limited-edition controller and thought "that's a lot," you're not wrong. It is a lot. It's also one of the most visually interesting pieces of gaming hardware I've seen in years, and I think the split reaction it's going to get is exactly the point.

Xbox officially revealed the controller and a matching wireless headset on April 20, both available for pre-order now and launching May 19 alongside Forza Horizon 6 on Xbox Series X/S and PC. The controller runs $89.99 and the headset $134.99. There's also a matching 8BitDo charging dock for $34.99, available separately from the official 8BitDo store starting June 8.

According to Xbox Wire, the design draws from Japan's Touge roads, the narrow, winding mountain passes considered the birthplace of drifting culture. A top-down view of those routes is mapped across the controller's body in green lines, which gives the whole thing a circuit-board-meets-windbreaker energy. The back carries the Horizon Festival logo in pink and white, and the two-tone rubberised diamond grips round out a controller that is, by Xbox's own admission, "one of the most vibrant" it has ever released. I'd call that an understatement.

Love It or Squint at It

Here's what I find interesting about this design: it's polarising on purpose, and Xbox seems to know it. Most limited-edition controllers play it safe. You get a colour swap, maybe a logo, and that's your lot. The Starfield headset was cool but restrained. The Forza Horizon 5 controller from 2021, with its translucent yellow and neon paint splatters, was one of the first times Xbox really leaned into "loud" as a design philosophy for peripherals. This sequel controller takes that approach and cranks it further.

I like it. Not in a "this would look tasteful on my desk" way, but in the same way I like the Marathon PS5 controller, another piece of hardware that chose personality over subtlety. There's a version of this controller that's just blue with a Forza logo stamped on it, and nobody would have blinked. The fact that Xbox went with something this aggressive tells me someone on the design team actually cared about making a statement, not just moving SKUs.

The headset is a slightly tamer companion piece. It's primarily white with Horizon printed in pink block letters across the band, plus splashes of the same cyan, pink, and green palette. The more interesting detail is the custom sound effects baked in: turning the headset on and off, pairing, muting and unmuting your mic all trigger unique audio that mixes a Japanese V8 engine sound with Forza Horizon 6's UI tones. It's a small touch, but it's the sort of thing that separates a themed product from a reskin.

At $90 for the controller and $135 for the headset, neither is cheap, but they're priced identically to other Xbox limited-edition hardware. You're paying a premium for a design you either love or can't stand, and there's no middle ground with something this loud. The headset is only the second limited-edition model Xbox has released for the Series X/S generation, after Starfield's.

Forza Horizon 6 launches May 19 on Xbox Series X/S and PC as a timed console exclusive, with a PS5 release expected later. According to Alinea Analytics, the game has already pre-sold over 500,000 copies, so there should be no shortage of people who want their peripherals to match.