Good news: Forza’s finally making the leap to PC after years of Microsoft keeping it locked away on Xbox. Possibly bad news: it’s going to be free to play and “slimmed down” according to a leak from the Seattle Times. Forza Motorsport 6: Apex was accidentally revealed by the American newspaper yesterday and though it was quickly taken down, a cached version is still available. In it, the Times discusses a recent Microsoft event where they recommited to the PC with a few announcements, Apex being one among them.
Here’s our picks for the best racing games, if this has given you the itch.
The event, which was originally embargoed until just a few hours from now at 6am PST / 2pm UTC, revealed that as part of Microsoft’s push for more users on the Windows 10 store, this free to play version of Forza would be made available exclusively through it. You can read the ST’s full piece via the Google cache, where they say that “Apex is positioned as an effort to show off the gaming potential of Windows 10” similar to how racing games are used as graphical showcases on consoles.
It’s unlikely that this will prove enough to conquer Steam on its own, but with every game added exclusively to the Windows 10 store, Microsoft carve out their own niche. The success of the OS itself – which I’ve been running for a few weeks now with zero problems – helps this along, but until they bring something truly killer we won’t see the impact. You’re also just never going to drag peopleaway from Steam, Microsoft can only hope to make purchasing through their channels an acceptable second option. Starting by porting the full versions of games, rather than free to play versions, would seem like a good idea to me.
Here’s the Xbox One launch trailer for the base version of Forza 6, in case you’re totally unfamiliar. It’s got cars in it, basically:
Thanks, EG