Trackmania Nations is getting remade, dubbed only as Trackmania. It’s getting delayed to July, but it looks promising.
Though apparently it has a weird business model. Like Trackmania Nations, Trackmania will be free-to-play, but that’s the Starter Access, with limited features.
More advanced features will require a yearly subscription of two different tiers- the Standard Access and Club Access.
Here’s a breakdown of all the features from each of three levels of access:
Starter Access:
- Free
- Access to official campaigns, to be refreshed on a quarterly basis (25 tracks on launch)
- Solo play and multiplayer
- Arcade Channel
- Try out track, replay and skin editors, and map review servers
- Weekly Nations League, for casual competition
Standard Access
- RM35 a year
- All features from Starter Access
- Track Of The Day
- Full access to replay, track editor and map review servers
- Keep all Track Of The Day and official campaign tracks for later plays
Club Access
- RM105 a year, RM209 for three years
- All features from Starter Access and Standard Access
- Join and create clubs
- Skin customisation
- Special campaigns
- Online Rooms
- Training tracks and competitions
- Can enter Open Grand League- the official qualifiers organised by Ubisoft Nadeo for the Trackmania Grand League
While it’s free-to-play, most of the features are geared for the hardcore, esports-focused members of the Trackmania community. Even the endorsed esports events are locked behind a subscription.
Still, the free-to-play and base subscription model doesn’t sound too bad. So it’s not a total deal-breaker just yet.
We shall see if Trackmania will recapture that magic of the original Trackmania Nations release when it comes out on July 1 on PC (Epic Games Store, Uplay).