Following the massive improvements released as part of Update 6, Forza Motorsport‘s Update 7 isn’t quite as monumental as that, but it’s a big deal nonetheless. The highlights are the Brands Hatch track and a huge reduction of the game’s installation footprint, cutting it down by a whopping 25 GB.
Forza Motorsport released in a questionable state in October 2023, and it wasn’t until early 2024 that the developer Turn 10 came up with a plan to resolve the game’s many, many problems. Now, with Update 7 rocking about, Forza Motorsport is indeed in a much healthier – albeit not perfect – state. The new update’s unquestionable headliner is Brands Hatch, one of the most iconic European sporting venues of all time. Alongside Brands Hatch and the ensmallening of the game’s installation, Update 7 also comes with updates to the active Forza Race Regulations, revised proximity arrows, and a variety of much-needed technical fixes, which means it’s a hefty upgrade no matter how you look at it.
Forza Motorsport is way smaller with Update 7, but with more content
First things first, we’re getting two Brands Hatch layouts at this time: the Grand Prix Circuit and the Indy layout, meaning it’s going to be great both for super-fast and relatively slow vehicles, respectively. The all-new Retro Racer Tour is now available, too, in Forza Motorsport‘s tried-and-true FOMO format, with the featured spotlight cars being the 1981 Ford Racing Capri Turbo by Zakspeed, the 1969 Lola T163, the 1967 Brabham BT24, and the legendary Jaguar XJR-9 #1 from 1988. It’s an exciting vehicle roster, for sure.
As it’s been a fair few months since the game has been out, Forza Motorsport‘s Car Pass is also slowly winding down, with three all-new vehicles slated to release over the next couple of weeks:
- April 10: Ginetta G55 GT4 (2019)
- April 17: Matra-Simca #146 Equipe MS650 Tour de France (1970)
- April 24: Ligier #11 Euro international JS-P3 (2016)
It’s possible that Turn 10 intends to follow in Playground Games’ footsteps for future vehicle DLC. Notably, after Forza Horizon 5‘s Car Pass wrapped up, the game ended up receiving a bunch of relatively cheap four-car DLCs. This has not been officially confirmed by Turn 10, mind, and there are some key differences in how Horizon and Motorsport titles have been historically monetized, but it’s good to be aware of the precedent.
Turn 10 also claims it’s fixed the infinite loading bug on PC that would sometimes appear when attempting to create custom livery designs for cars you didn’t own. Further, Update 7 includes a PC-specific setting to tweak the audio sample rate and buffer size, which might improve CPU usage depending on how you set them up. Finally, as of Update 7, Forza Motorsport‘s total installation footprint has been greatly reduced on both Xbox Series and PC platforms by 25 and 29 GB, respectively.
