Won’t bother beating a dead horse with specifics, but I think this whole launch catastrophe could have been avoided if T10 did the opposite of how they marketed the game. You know, by being honest.
Rather than go whole hog on bs promises, corny video productions, and cringey catchphrases, they should have opted for honesty. They should have said something like, ‘we’ve laid a foundation here, and now we need your participation and input to make Forza Motorsport the best it can be. And you can join us now, for free, just by being a Gamepass subscriber.’
Then you have a Trello, and let your playerbase know what you’re up to, what feedback you’ve heard, and are planning to act upon. When you’ve reached a certain point of quality, go full release and drop your Premium editions. Not only have you then managed expectations, but you’ve gotten the community invested in crafting the game into something they actually want.
Instead, the way this whole thing has been handled feels like one of two things:
- Gross incompetence, or
- An outright scam.
But you know what, whatever. It is what it is. They chose bs, and they’ll get the consequences of that. Personally, I’ve since discovered AMS2, and I’m moving on. I’ll still be watching the boards here now and then to see what, if anything, gets improved, but I don’t see any kind of turnaround happening anytime soon.
To those enjoying themselves, good on you. I wish I was one of you. I really do. To those who aren’t, I sympathize.
But above all, to Turn 10 and Microsoft: you really should learn from this. FM8’s launch is one of the worst I can recall, and that’s considering truly epic failures like Cyberpunk and No Man’s Sky. The only question is, are you willing to put in the effort to redeem your game, like HG and CDPR have with theirs?
We’ll see.
Peace.