Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown races out of 2022, off of last-gen
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, the long-awaited revival of the pioneering open-world racing series, will have to be even more longly awaited. Publisher Nacon and developer KT Games have announced that the game will no longer launch on September 22nd, 2022, as previously announced. It will now arrive sometime in 2023.
What’s more, the game is shedding its last-gen release platform and will now only come to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PC.
“Our goal with Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is to make it the most polished gaming experience in the franchise by spending more time on its development.… [W]ith the aim of making the most of the technology in the latest consoles and maximising the overall quality of the game, NACON has decided to no longer develop Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One,” the companies announced in a new blog post.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is a revival of a series that started out at Atari. The first two games made a mark for being early efforts at open-world racing, with drivable virtual versions of Oahu and Ibiza built at 1:1 scale. Solar Crown will continue the tradition by setting players loose in a life-size recreation of Hong Kong Island.
In today’s announcement, the team stressed that it wanted to take extra development time to deliver on its vision of making “Hong Kong Island and its 550km of roads to be a no-limits playground where the fun never ends.”
One small bright spot for fans today is the news that Nacon and KT are currently working on a closed beta schedule for the game. That means if you’re lucky enough to get in, you may get to go hands-on with the game this year after all.
