Forza Motorsport 5 Is Free This Weekend

Xbox One owners will be able to try out Forza Motorsport 5 for no charge in a few days. Today Microsoft announced a free weekend for the racing game.

Forza Motorsport 5 will be free to play from 12:01 a.m. PDT on September 4th through 11:59 p.m. PDT on September 7th. All of the game's features will be accessible during this time. The only catch is that you'll need to be an Xbox Live Gold member to take part in the free trial.

"Throughout the weekend, you will have the chance to compete in a special multiclass endurance in-game race event, Grand Tour of Prague," Microsoft says. "Complete this endurance event and drive at least 130 miles in the race to earn a new title and badge for your Forza Motorsport 5 profile."

At the end of the weekend, you'll need to buy Forza 5 to keep playing it. Whatever progress you earned during the trial will carry over into the full version, though.

Xbox One owners in the United States can also enter a related sweepstakes during the free weekend. The prize is an all-expenses paid trip to the Forza Motorsport Grand Prix Road Racing Class in Arizona. This three-day course at the Bondurant School of High Performance Driving teaches you how to drive like a professional racer. You can enter the sweepstakes through the Forza Motorsport 5 landing page on the Xbox Live. All the fine print on the contest can be found here.

Forza 5 was released last fall alongside the Xbox One itself. It was one of the highest-rated launch titles for the console thanks in part to its visuals and realistic physics. The Drivatar system, which creates A.I. opponents based on racing data from your friends, was also praised. However, the game was criticized for including less content than Forza 4 and offering a large amount of DLC in its place.

So yeah, you may or may not dig Forza 5. Still, at least you can try it out for free. I hope this trial weekend is the start of a regular feature for Xbox One. Free weekends are one of my favorite Steam features and I'd love to see it adopted on XB1 and other consoles.

Xbox One owners will get another free taste of Forza later this month. The Forza Horizon 2 demo is expected to launch in two weeks. Horizon 2, a sequel to Playground Games' open-world spin-off, will be arriving on Xbox One and Xbox 360 on the last day of September.