Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown had a pretty tough release due to the many connection problems players have encountered, preventing them from playing. Sadly, contrary to the first two games in the series, there is no offline mode available and neither the dev team or Nacon have said anything about its possible addition in the future. An importance server maintenance occurred this morning so some of the problems should be fixed but we'll need to wait for the first major update (coming soon) to see if the other issues have been addressed. Performance and optimization fixes will hopefully be part of the package as even the RTX 4080 of GeForce NOW Ultimate seems to struggle with framerate from time to time. We recorded some more gameplay footage of the game to show you, so join us inside and check it out.

As. Crazy as it might sound, the Test Drive Unlimited series is the reason I ended up being the editor-in-chief of this very website. Needless to say this franchise has a special place in my heart. True, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was not developed by the original studio, but some of its members used to work at Eden Games. Since we got our copies of the game a little bit too late, we couldn't play much, even less so as we ran into a serious bug on Xbox Series X (for some reason, the game now keeps crashing, but the devs are aware and it seems to be a network related issue). Nacon provided us with a PS5 and PC version but we still didn't have much time to play. On PC, the game is very demanding and our RTX 2080 Ti cannot hold a steady 60 fps framerate with either high or ultra settings, unless we set the resolution to 1080p and use DLSS. As a result, image quality takes a pretty big hit. When trying to run the game at 1440p with DLSS, we can't go beyond the medium preset, and it's not even perfect. It's a shame as the PC version looks sharper than its console counterpart. Note that we've also seen some pretty visible slowdowns on PS5 when using the Performance mode in cockpit cam. Since we had very little time with this mode on Xbox, we can't say if the issue exists on Microsoft's machine, to the same extent or a lesser one.

It was quite unexpected but an alpha version of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was made available to everyone on Steam Thursday night. It makes it possible to explore a pretty good part of the map with up to six cars, but the catch is that the build runs quite poorly on most systems. Now we're quite used to that when it comes to preview builds, but it's rather surprising to let anyone approach the game in such a state as it's bound to draw negative attention. That said, however worrying the technical issues are, we still see a lot of potential in this new episode. The map looks interesting and it's appealing to discover, car handling is good so far and we just love the engine sounds. It's obviously still rough around the edges, it's clearly not as polished as Forza Horizon in terms of graphics and overall presentation, but it has managed to catch that TDU vibe we've been missing for so long. Let's hope Kylotonn will manage to deliver when the final version ships, even if they have to delay it a bit more.

The wait is finally over, we now know that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on September 12. We can only hope that the final game will be convincing enough to satisfy the fans of the TDU franchise. French developer Kylotonn is now behind the wheel instead of Eden Games, but they've proven us that they could make good driving games with the WRC series. Fingers crossed!

We're running a bit late with the coverage of Nacon Connect 2024 but inside you will find what we think are the most interesting trailers to remember. Not everything is to our liking mind you, but we still have high hopes regarding Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown and GreedFall 2, despite plans for an Early Access release for the latter.

Nacon and Kylotonn had promised we would get some news from Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown this week and the new trailer entitled The Racer is now available. After The Cruiser a few months ago, we get a sneak peek at the competitive aspect and the social interactions that will be possible. Sadly, no precise release date has been announced, so we only know the game will come out sometime in 2024.
Update: High quality version now available to download.

Earlier today, Nacon unveiled a series of new trailers of upcoming games, among which RoboCop: Rogue City, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, Steelrising, Ad Infinitum and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum to name just a few. Sadly almost all of them are only available on YouTube.

Still no gameplay to be seen for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown but at least we now know that the game won't ship before September 22 in 2022. We'll have to be a bit more patient to see some real in-game sequences but it's probably best to give KT Racing (Kylotonn) all the time they need to polish the game so we won't be disappointed when we get to discover the new destination they have chosen, Hong Kong.

TDU and Gamersyde (Xboxyde actually) go way back. On the French side, the official thread is probably one (if not the) biggest one on the website and that's even where it all started for me. I had been a silent member since 2003 but in 2005/6, I started sharing my thoughts with the community. Little did I know that I would end up Gamersyde's editor-in-chief... When Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was officially announced, we were hoping to see some gameplay soon but a year later, we're still waiting, even after this week's new trailer. With Kylotonn behind the wheel, we're hopeful that the driving part of the game will be solid as we really enjoy the WRC series, but we'll have to wait until July to maybe see something to confirm our good feeling about all this.