Forza Motorsport Continues a Troubling Trend for PC Game Pass Releases

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For fans of simulation racing subscribed to Xbox Game Pass, the launch of Forza Motorsport on the service meant the opportunity to try out the latest entry in one of the genre’s most acclaimed franchises at no additional cost. But for those who chose to play the Turn 10 Studios title on PC rather than Microsoft’s Xbox Series X or S consoles, numerous technical issues with the long-awaited racer got in the way of the fun and left them struggling to find fixes. While this is undeniably frustrating for players who simply want to enjoy a few laps around the virtual track, Forza Motorsport is far from the first Xbox Game Pass PC title in recent memory to launch on the service awash with performance problems and other bugs.

The last year has seen the arrival of numerous high-profile games to Microsoft’s subscription service for PC and consoles. From acclaimed indie games like Sabotage Studio’s Sea of Stars to AAA titles like Bethesda’s Starfield, Game Pass subscribers have had plenty of options to choose from. Unfortunately for PC players, though, many of the biggest titles to debut on the service have arrived in technical states varying from slightly buggy to outright broken. With its numerous performance problems and technical issues plaguing PC players, Forza Motorsport is the latest game to carry on this troubling trend.

Forza Motorsport Is The Latest In a Line of Buggy PC Ports on Xbox Game Pass

Forza Motorsport may be the latest PC title to arrive on Xbox Game Pass in a sorry technical state, but it’s far from the first one. Beginning in early 2023 with complaints about game-breaking bugs in Atomic Heart, developer Mundfish’s alternate-history Soviet shooter, this year several high-profile PC games on Microsoft’s subscription service have been plagued with performance problems and bugs. This trend continued with the release of Bethesda’s ill-fated Redfall in May, with problems with the game’s graphics, performance, and AI rendering it borderline unplayable for many PC players.

In arguably the most notorious example of a PC title hitting the service still suffering from serious performance problems, Bethesda Game Studios’ long-awaited Starfield faced almost immediate backlash from many PC players for its numerous technical issues. Some of the biggest complaints about the PC port of Starfield centered around its lack of support for Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling solution, with players on even high-end Nvidia GPUs struggling to achieve acceptable framerate in the game. Unfortunately for fans of sim racing, this trend of technically rocky releases of PC ports for Game Pass continues with Forza Motorsport.

For Some PC Players, Technical Problems Steal the Show in Forza Motorsport

While Turn 10 Studios’ Forza Motorsport released in substantially better shape than some of its Xbox Game Pass contemporaries, the latest entry in the long-running franchise still suffers from some serious technical issues. One of the biggest problems faced by many PC players is a bug with the game’s vertical sync options. Designed to let players control the game’s performance by locking the framerate, Forza Motorsport fails to actually sync the framerate to the selected value in many instances.

Much like with Starfield, it’s PC players with Nvidia GPUs that seem to be experiencing some of the worst issues with the Turn 10 Studios racer. Forza Motorsport supports DLSS natively unlike Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG, but the game still seems to perform poorly on Nvidia cards when compared to AMD-based systems. While some of this can be chalked up to the fact that the Xbox Series X and S use AMD hardware, likely making optimization for the company’s PC GPUs easier, it’s no explanation for the seemingly poor support for Nvidia’s cards.

Forza Motorsport offers one of the most polished and precise sim racing experiences available on Xbox Game Pass, but these technical issues are preventing some PC players from enjoying the ride. Given other recent instances of PC ports on the service suffering from similarly substandard performance, this is one trend that hopefully subsides before the next AAA PC title hits Game Pass.

Forza Motorsport is available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S.