Forza Motorsport has received an update one day before Early Access.
As shared by klobrille on Twitter, the update is at 1.3 GB. Early Access begins tomorrow, October 5, 2023.
Forza Motorsport is an ambitious reimagining of the franchise from Turn 10 Studios. From the franchise’s inception in 2005, Forza Motorsport would come out with a new game every two years, with considerable improvements coming with each sequel.
Eventually, Turn 10 would pair the game with the Forza Horizon series from Playground Games, and make Forza into an annualized game franchise. But then the series abruptly stopped with Forza Motorsport 7 on the Xbox One in 2017.
Forza Motorsport 7 was certainly not the ideal way for the series to end off on. While many fans and reviewers liked the game, a lootbox game and derivative game design took away from its popularity. Its clear now that that game’s reception prodded Turn 10 and Microsoft Game Studios to think about what to do with their premier racing franchise.
And so, we now see that the latest Forza Motorsport has been designed from the ground up to be a racing platform. This does not mean that Turn 10 is compromising the game with live service elements. Instead, Turn 10 will serve players a single dynamic title instead of prodding them to buy new games with incremental updates every two years.
In some ways it’s an ambitious plan, but in other ways it’s also a streamlining of Turn 10’s design process. New cars, race tracks, mechanics, and more, will slowly be added in to the new Forza Motorsport for the next few months. Subsequently, gamers will experience the game change alongside them as they keep playing it year after year.
We don’t quite know if Turn 10 will pull off this vision, which will require dedication for the next few years. But it’s a perfect design to match Microsoft’s new gaming paradigm. A racing platform that changes slowly through the years is ideal to sell players on Game Pass, as opposed to having several separate releases, that will each need their own dedicated servers to invest on. It’s also an ideal game to rent, or to fit in as part of a game subscription.
And so, this first update is an indication of what the new Forza Motorsport experience will be like.
Forza Motorsport will be released on October 10, 2023, on Windows via Steam and on Xbox Series X|S. It will also be Day One on Game Pass.
