Fans have been waiting for years to get a new Crew title, and after a long time it is finally here but thanks to The Crew Motorfest Insider Program you can play the new game before anyone else!
The Insider Program is a new way for Ubisoft to test its upcoming racing game. This was confirmed when the teaser trailer dropped earlier this year, but what exactly does it entail?
The Crew Motorfest Insider Program
Most gamers will be familiar with the term "beta testing". For those that aren't, though, there are two main stages of testing when it comes to video games.
The first is at the "alpha" stage, where developers test out the first playable version of the game. This is a long way before the game will be available to the public.
The second stage is beta testing, and it's becoming more common for these to be available to the public. That's essentially what The Insider Program is, with testing and content available right now.
Not everybody will be selected for this. For example, only 2,000 PC players had been selected for Phase 1, with Phase 2 encompassing 5,000 players, also on PC.
You can sign up by entering your email on the game's website and if you're chosen, your email will be sent an invite.
All of the Phases
There are four phases to the Insider Program for The Crew Motorfest. Phase 1 has been completed with 2,000 PC players. Phase 2 began on 8th March with a massive 5,000 players on PC.
Phase 3 has just begun on 11th April and is the last phase to be exclusively held for PC players. Not much is known about Phase 4, except for the fact that it will be open to PlayStation and Xbox players too.
There's plenty of data for the devs to draw off already though, with over 17,000 hours of playtime clocked up and over 25,000 messages received on Discord.
The PlayStation and Xbox versions of the game will get involved with this, but not until "the latter stages", so only Phase 4. As for the overall numbers allowed into the program, that is set to increase as it progresses.
Behind the Wheel video
If you want to get a behind-the-scenes look at what Ivory Tower has been up to with The Crew Motorfest, you're in luck. This Behind The Wheel video goes into more detail about what the Ubisoft company have been working on so far:
What are players saying so far?
The first two phases of the Insider Program have now been concluded. So far, according to Ubisoft, feedback has been "very positive", with gamers praising the graphics, amount of content, audio design and the handling.
Off-road handling has been identified as an area for improvement. Developers Ivory Tower have worked on and are now reporting more positive feedback following these alterations prior to Phase 2 beginning.
Ivory Tower has also put time into improving the game modes that are showcased in the Insider Program.
Now, as participants are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before taking part, we can't get any information from them directly.
For now, until a new gameplay video is released, this is the best we've got to go on when it comes to The Crew Motorfest's quality.
Trailer and release date
The big reveal for The Crew Motorfest got us all excited for the game's release. Part of the teaser trailer confirmed the release date to be sometime this year.
Given when the game was revealed, we're going to opt for a release date sometime in the Autumn. So, we can expect it to arrive sometime between September and November 2023 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC and Amazon Luma.