Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown “was not an easy launch” admits KT Racing

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s terrible start will go down as one of the worst racing game launches of all time. When it was released last September, Nacon’s open-world racer was plagued by server issues. For an online-focused game, this was catastrophic.

But what made the situation worse was that the online connection requirement prevented players from accessing the game they preordered.

The issues don’t end there, from graphical glitches to an overly grindy progression system and the absence of fan-favourite modes from previous entries. Its spate of problems suggested that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was perhaps too ambitious for a team with fewer resources than the developers of Forza Horizon and The Crew. 

Season updates have steadily improved the experience, adding new cars, a new map set in Ibiza Town, a solo mode for single-player races and car delivery missions, along with bug fixes and optimisations.

But nearly one year on from its troubled launch, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown still feels like it has a long road to redemption.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is a “long-term project”

KT Racing is keenly aware of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s shortcomings. “We all know that we didn’t have the launch we all expected,” Nacon’s Head of Racing / Motorsport, Sébastien Waxin, reflected in a media briefing attended by Traxion. “It’s not a secret that we had all these technical issues that are part of the past now.”

“It was not an easy launch,” he continues. “But we always knew that we had a strong base for a long-term project.”

After a false start, it’s hoped that the next year of updates can put Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown on the right path and recapture the spirit of the original games. Put simply, the next year will be make or break for the open-world racer. 

Spanning four seasons, from October 2025 to July 2026, the second year of live service updates will reintroduce Test Drive Unlimited’s signature lifestyle elements that were absent in Solar Crown. This will include taxi driving missions, new modes voted by the community and the celebrated return of houses and real estate in Season 8, set to launch next July.

This focus on recapturing the spirit of the first two Test Drive Unlimited games first started in Season 3, with car delivery missions replacing the originally planned Clan Wars update.

“We updated the plans to give the community some game modes they were asking for,” says Waxin. “The idea was we needed to go more on the lifestyle aspects and, let’s say, leave the racing aspects on the side of the road. That’s strong feedback from the community.”

This refocus on lifestyle elements comes after an infamous comment in a developer diary that sparked backlash from the community, in which KT Racing stated that “the core gaming experience of TDU is, after all, racing.”

Games like No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 show that it’s possible to recover from the negative publicity surrounding a disastrous launch. However, KT Racing doesn’t see Year 2 as a relaunch for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown.

“The idea is to grow the community by growing the content. By showing the community that we can answer their requests and bring back some features they’re asking for,” says Waxin. “With the data we collect, we see that people are coming back regularly to check what’s new. We see a trend that the community is growing.

“We know that some publishers can do that,” he adds, referring to game relaunches and re-releases. “For now, it’s not the path that we want to follow. Maybe it will be different at some point. We want to focus on the experience, the gameplay, the features and the content we are bringing to the game.”

“We would do things differently”

Reflecting on Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s disastrous launch, Waxin says KT Racing would “do things differently” if the game was released now.  

“We would do things differently. These are all very technical challenges,” he says. Prior to its launch, KT Racing launched a series of beta tests on PC, but Waxin regrets not testing the servers with console players.

“It’s always complex to organise beta tests on consoles. We made a lot of tests with different beta phases on Steam, but the Steam platform is not the main platform of Test Drive.”

While player numbers peaked at a paltry 266 last month according to SteamDB, the PlayStation version is Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown’s “most active community and platform.” In March, KT Racing confirmed that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown had exceeded 500,000 players across all platforms since its release.

“We know that people are only looking at Steam numbers because it’s the only data available. But trust me, it’s not representative at all of the player base that we have because it’s not the main platform for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. 

“Maybe we underestimated the console player base for Test Drive. Because we know that the PlayStation numbers are very strong. So maybe we would do more tests before the launch with multiple platforms, rather than focusing on Steam.”

Waxin adds that KT Racing is “looking for solutions” to increase the player base by implementing cross-region and crossplay multiplayer. “I think cross-region, crossplay and making more tests for the scaling would help,” says Waxin.   

“We want to keep the Test Drive DNA”

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has stiff competition in the open-world racing scene from Forza Horizon 5, The Crew Motorfest and Need for Speed Unbound. KT Racing hopes that the lifestyle updates planned for Year 2 will entice new players. However, the studio emphasises that it won’t add new features for the sake of appeasing fans of other franchises.  

“The objective is to show that, with the Test Drive DNA, maybe it will seduce NFS players. But we will not make design choices to [specifically] seduce this audience. We want to keep the Test Drive DNA, and if people feel that all the content we have in the game is interesting enough, we will of course welcome them.”

As Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is a “long-term project” for KT Racing, Waxin hinted that there is enough scope to support it beyond Year 2, but wouldn’t confirm if Season 8 will be the final update. Ultimately, that may depend on how well the Year 2 updates are received by the community and if an active player base can be retained.

“We have this list of topics, features and content that is very long. If we can, and if we want to, we could do content and features for five, six, seven, or eight years. So, let’s focus on Year 2 for now,” says Waxin. “We’ll communicate on the content after in due time.”