$50 for a 3-Year-Old Racer on Switch 2? Crew Motorfest Dated

Fifty dollars for a three-year-old always-online racer. Ubisoft announced that The Crew Motorfest is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on October 8, 2026, priced at $49.99 in the US, €49.99 in Europe, and £44.99 in the UK. The game first launched on September 14, 2023 for PS5, Xbox Series, PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and the Ubisoft Store.

The Crew Motorfest is the third entry in Ubisoft's open-world racing series, developed by Ubisoft Ivory Tower. It swaps the continental US map of its predecessors for the island of O'ahu, Hawaii, offering a mix of street racing, off-road challenges, and themed "playlists" built around car culture niches like American muscle and Japanese drift racing. The game has continued to receive seasonal content updates, currently up to Season 10, so it's not as if Ubisoft is dumping a dead product onto new hardware. But the pricing still feels aggressive for what you're getting.

By October 8, The Crew Motorfest will be just over three years old. On other platforms, it regularly sells for a fraction of its launch price. You can grab it on Steam right now for significantly less than $50 during sales, and it's been included with Game Pass Ultimate on Xbox. Asking Switch 2 buyers to pay near-full price for a game that existing players picked up for half that, or less, is the kind of "Switch tax" that Nintendo platform owners have been complaining about for years. The original Switch was notorious for this, and it looks like the pattern is carrying over to its successor.

Always-Online on a Portable

Here's where the ask gets harder to swallow. The Crew Motorfest requires a persistent internet connection to play. Every version does, and the Switch 2 port is no exception. That strips away one of the Switch's biggest selling points: playing games on the go. You can't boot this up on a train, on a plane, or anywhere without a stable connection. For a $50 game on a hybrid console, that's a real limitation, and one I can't imagine Ubisoft will advertise prominently on the box.

And speaking of the box, the physical edition ships as a game-key card. You get a card in a case that lets you download and install the game digitally. It's not a cartridge. You can resell or transfer it as long as the servers are running, but if Ubisoft ever pulls the plug, that card becomes worthless. This is Ubisoft we're talking about; the company shut down the original The Crew's servers in 2024, rendering that game completely unplayable. One commenter on the announcement put it bluntly: "Folks should not buy it because there is no trusting they will keep the game playable long term." I think that's a fair concern, and the game-key card format makes it worse by giving you the illusion of ownership without the substance of it.

None of this means The Crew Motorfest is a bad game. It reviewed well at launch, and the seasonal updates have kept it alive with new content. If you're a Switch 2 owner who's never played it and you want an arcade racer set in Hawaii, you could do worse. But $50 is a steep entry point when the game's age, its always-online requirement, and Ubisoft's track record with server longevity all work against the value proposition.

Ubisoft is offering a five-hour free trial, which at least lets players test the waters before committing. If you're on the fence, that's the move. The Crew Motorfest launches on Switch 2 on October 8 for $49.99.