Forza Motorsport 8 Multiplayer: How to Play Online & Is There Splitscreen Versus? Answered

One of the things that has always made Forza’s Motorsport series of games so intense is having a full track of rival racers to go up against and test your skill. However, sometimes you get tired of playing against the bots in the game and you have more of a desire to test your skills against other people, or just sit on the couch and go head-to-head against your friends and family. Here’s how to play multiplayer in Forza Motorsport 8 and if it has splitscreen multiplayer.

How Do You Play Multiplayer in Forza Motorsport 8?

If you want to play online multiplayer in Forza Motorsport, you can choose to play online with other players in the Featured Multiplayer mode or you can set up custom races with friends in the Private Multiplayer tab.

To play Featured Multiplayer, from the main menu head to Race and then choose Featured Multiplayer. From there, you’ll be able to choose from a bunch of different events featuring different classes of cars on different tracks and race head to head against other players who have similar qualifying times to you.

To play Private Multiplayer, choose Race from the main menu and go to Private Multiplayer at the bottom of the list. You can then choose to invite a maximum of 31 other people to your lobby before creating an event with whatever settings, track and cars you want to allow.

You can choose plenty of different modes and game types in the private multiplayer sessions to really customize your race to a particular group of friends or cars. You can choose from Circuit Races, Timed Races, Multi-Class Races or Meetups depending on how you want to battle it out, or if you just want to drive around casually and show off your collection, you can do that too.

Circuit Races are the standard where you’re racing to cross the finish line first after a set number of laps, while a Timed Race doesn’t have laps — rather you had better be sure to be in first place by the time the timer runs out. Multi-Class Races are interesting because you can race with multiple other car classes on the track as you, but you’ll only be measured against the other racers in the same class of car.

Does Forza Motorsport 8 Have Splitscreen Multiplayer?

Unfortunately, Forza Motorsport 8 will not have a splitscreen multiplayer mode at launch. It isn’t totally out of the picture for the feature to get added at some point in the future in an update or a patch, but given the complexity of the game and the fact that Xbox games have to be compatible with both Series X and Series S, it isn’t very likely.

This comes alongside another legacy feature that isn’t going to make it in the game which is a spectator mode for Featured Multiplayer. Chris Esaki explained during August’s Forza Monthly stream that neither are going to be “in for launch,” which might sound like there’s hope for later implementation, but his explanation made it seem like these omissions were for the better.

That’s about it for how to play online multiplayer in Forza Motorsport 8 and if there will be a splitscreen versus mode. While it’s unfortunate news for players who love to play together locally from their couches, there are still great options for racing online to fill that void. For more guides on things like how to drift in Forza Motorsport 8, keep checking back here.