You can now pre-load Forza Horizon 3 on Windows 10 ahead of launch

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
published

If you're preparing to sink some time into Forza Horizon 3 on PC, you can now start pre-loading the game ahead of launch on September 27. That's just in time for those who happened to pre-order the Ultimate Edition of the game, which will let them start playing four days early on September 23.

The pre-load was announced by the official Forza Twitter account, which also noted game-ready drivers will be on their way from both NVIDIA and AMD tomorrow:

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Forza Horizon 3 is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, which means if you buy the game for Xbox One, you also own it on Windows 10 and vice versa. If you've already pre-ordered the game, you can start pre-loading the game on your Windows 10 PC now. And if you're interested in learning more of our thoughts on the game, be sure to check out our review.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

27 Comments
  • Impressive how fast Microsoft got the Windows 10 Store up to snuff. AAA releases only started happening a mere half a year ago, and since then they've addressed complaints about Vysync, installation directory, spec checks, download progress, and pre-loading, among others.
  • Well, it's not like they went into it without a plan. The things they were missing had mostly been announced as in-development, and probably weren't far from release. Still, the service is only as good as the software, and the W10 Store is still lacking apps, without question. It's good that they're seemingly serious about the Store for game distribution though, especially with Play Anywhere. It DOES make me think they're leaning towards making Scorpio very Steam Machine-like, rather than a fully separate gaming console.
  • Does the XB1 already have the preload feature or is this something only for the PC?
  • XB1 usually has it, I can't see this being any different.
  • XB1 already let people pre-load at least 1 week ago.
  • Pre-loading now, should only take about an hour ;D Really looking forward to playing the game later this week!
  • How were you able to Preload? I keep getting an error code )':
  • I'm not sure what I could have done differently except that I already had the initial 6MB or so installed on my PC a week ago and all I had to do was press the Update button today and it downloaded the rest.
  • You might need to be up to date on Windows 10.. a few friends were getting errors through the windows store because they were not updated to Windows 10 Anniversary.
  • I'm more excited for Friday than Rebecca Black
  • After the demo, I'm sold...
  • Amazing game. Already pre-loaded on XB1 and now pre-loading on PC. Love this play- anywhere feature.
  • Great but as usual with Windows -- it doesn't work (error 0x80070005). Why can't they be a bit more like Apple.
  • Apple wouldn't let you pre-load, and you wouldn't have PC support.
  • Hmmm.... Tempting but, I'll buy the disc... If I try to donwnload it, it will take 3 hours... installing takes about a 1/2 hour off disc, then the 1.2 billion updates...
  • You cant buy disc for PC. Also, what does it matter if it takes three hours? The game isn't available until Friday?
  • Yea.. So instead of preloading it, you can wait until Friday, go to a physical store to get the disc, and voila! Only 30min install time!
  • And download the 8GB day one update in 3h on Friday. Great move!
  • Set it to download while you sleep 8 hrs....
  • My problem isn't the time it takes for digital to download. That doesn't bother me because I can go do other stuff. What bothers me is my ISP data caps and there's no way around that in my area. There's only one game in town for adequately high speed ISPs.
  • If only Xbox could download it and share same game data across to a pc or vise versa.
  • I couldn't figure out how to preload it. I assume it's through the Store app? When I go to the product (Forza Horizon 3 Ultimate Edition) it just shows a Manage button. EDIT: I could have sworn I checked the product page for the game itself, but now I see the Install button. Wish they would show the Install button on the edition pages also.
  • have you first downloaded it through your xbox one console? because when i go to the win10 app store it only says "this product is yours" or something like that   what am i doing wrong? cant figure out how to install on windows
  • If you're looking at the product page for the Ultimate bundle, you have to click on the standard game (under "Included in this bundle")
  • Also if you dont meet the minimum requirements I dont think you can pre load it, I just had to update my Windows 10 to the lastest version 
  • my system kills minimum requirements... it ticks all the boxes but at cpu and gpu it says "get more info" on the cpu and also on the graphics card...it states my cpu as i7-6700K ...wtf why dont I get a tick? and it shows minimum gpu of some scrawny amd card and I have a gtx1080? ...should have a tick there too....my system is updated too 14393.187 ..minimum requirements states it is 14393.102 ..so my pc is well up to date? is there anyway it could have already installed? as it tells me it is and I haven't clicked on anything!   
  • Why dont I have an option to preload this? I bought the standard edition its preinstalled on my xbone, and on my pc it shows up in my purchase history, but when i click the product page for the standard edition it only has a Pre Order button, no install button.