Forza Horizon 3 PC demo will be out after launch

Very pretty racing game Forza Horizon 3 is releasing imminently, and your PC needs to be this good in order to play it. But what if you're straddling that 'minimum system requirements' line, and you want to be totally sure you'll be able to run it comfortably? Enter the 'demo', a radical new idea from Microsoft Studios, that will let you play a small portion of a game without paying anything.

Good news: Microsoft has announced a demo for Forza Horizon 3. Bad news: while it came out yesterday on Xbox One, we'll have to wait until after launch for it to come to PC. Boo hiss etc, but Microsoft points the way to Forza Motorsport 6: Apex, a free, 'curated' version of its latest Forza Motorsport, for Windows 10.

If you're not au fait with the Forza series, you're probably wondering what the difference between a Motorsport and a Horizon is. Well, Motorsport is the 'proper', simmy Forza, while Horizon is their more arcadey offering: extreme-sports-meets-tourism in an attractive open world. Forza Horizon 3 is coming to PC, via Windows 10, on September 27, thanks to Microsoft's new Play Anywhere initiative.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.