March's Nacon Connect will be make or break for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown feels like a mythical game at this point. Since the new open-world racer was announced in 2020, we’ve only seen a small snippet of gameplay lasting a few seconds.

With the open-world racer delayed from September 2022 to sometime in 2023, it's not clear when the next glimpse of TDUSC will come.

A new Nacon Connect show streaming in March will preview some of the publisher’s most hotly anticipated titles coming in 2023. Is this when we will finally see new Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown gameplay?

It's make or break for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown

Our last look at Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was in last year’s Nacon Connect stream in July, with a gameplay teaser showing a McLaren cruising the streets of Hong Kong Island at night.

While this was our first look at actual gameplay footage, it was disappointingly brief.

Since then, Ubisoft has shaken up the open-world racing landscape with the surprise reveal of The Crew Motorfest. Featuring a sprawling open-world set in Hawaii, Motorfest looks like a TDU spiritual successor that will challenge Forza Horizon.

With a team of former TDU developers working on The Crew Motorfest at Ivory Tower, we're effectively getting two new TDU games this year.

And while most of TDUSC’s trailers have relied on CGI to showcase the game’s vision, The Crew Motorfest's trailer is based entirely on game engine footage.

Three years on, most TDUSC footage shown so far doesn’t represent the game we’ll be playing. It leaves us with the feeling that TDUSC was announced far too early. 

Will Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown be shown at Nacon Connect 2023?

Announced on social media, the next Nacon Connect will stream in March and provide “exclusive updates” on the publisher's upcoming 2023 games. These include RoboCop: Rogue City and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.

Tellingly, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown isn’t featured in the game lineup teaser.

With competition heating up in the open-world racing genre, next month’s Nacon Connect is an ideal time for KT Racing to present proper TDUSC gameplay footage and reveal the release date.

From the volume of comments flooding the announcement asking for TDUSC, fans are losing patience. With The Crew Motorfest stealing its thunder, March's Nacon Connect is a chance for KT Racing to rekindle excitement for TDUSC.

We’re not getting our hopes up, though.

March’s show will be the first of two Nacon Connect events this year. A date for the second show is not confirmed, but Nacon Connect is usually held annually in July.

With no firm release date, we're not expecting TDUSC to arrive until later this year. If that’s the case, we’ll probably have to wait until July’s Nacon Connect for a fresh look at the open-world racer.

“We will show more to fans as soon as possible. I can say it won’t be in years – it will be as soon as possible,” Creative Director Alain Jarniou said when we asked when we’ll next see TDUSC in our interview with KT Racing.

Nacon Connect 2023 time

While we probably won’t find out any new TDUSC details at next month’s Nacon Connect, new Isle of Man TT: Ride on the Edge 3 gameplay footage could be shown as the May release date fast approaches.

While we’ve seen high-speed races Snaefell Mountain Course, we’ve yet to see the game’s new Open Roads free roam mode.

You can livestream Nacon Connect on 9 March at 6pm GMT / 7pm CET on Nacon’s YouTube channel.