Update (April 2): Kunos has further confirmed the name change via its social media accounts.
Assetto Corsa developer Kunos Simulazioni has teased the new title of Assetto Corsa Evo for the upcoming sequel, by way of a nifty little clue in the new Nurburgring DLC pack for ACC.
Although it may be a day late for Easter itself, the teaser comes as a signage easter egg on the new Nurburgring 24h track. We’ve only seen it in one location so far, where it manages to be both subtle and somewhat in your face.
It’s a dynamic display on the outside of the left-handed turn 10, Kumho Kurve. The large, black sign — which isn’t there in real life — is pretty much in the center of your vision for several seconds from the exit of the Michael Schumacher S.
Some of the time it displays “2024”, which has been the scheduled release year for Assetto Corsa 2 for quite some time now. However if you can catch it at the right time it also displays a QR code:
That QR code points you to an interstitial page on the Assetto Corsa website titled “Assetto Corsa Evo“. At time of writing that doesn’t actually load all that well, but it does show a short teaser video with the Assetto Corsa Evo name and the tagline “Driving Simulation Evolved”.
There’s also (when it does load) a sign-up form for Kunos Simulazioni’s newsletter regarding its sim racing games, but for the time being that’s all the information we’re getting. It’s also worth noting that the display in question showed Fanatec signage in the preview builds, and that today is April 1 — but we’re going to assume it’s genuine for now.
If AC2 will indeed be ACE, it’s certainly an interesting choice of name. As anyone familiar with Ferrari’s cars over the years will know, “Evoluzione” is the Italian term for evolution; perhaps the full phrase was nixed to avoid confusion with “Competizione”. Given that the title will use an all-new in-house engine, the suggestion that it’s an evolution also seems like a bit of a hedge.
If you want to see the teaser yourself — and while we’re waiting for more information on Assetto Corsa Evo — you’ll need to grab the 24H Nurburgring Pack for ACC which is available on PC versions of the game from today.
As we suspected, the $/€12.99 pack contains the combined, 15.7-mile 24H Nurburgring layout rather than the Nordschleife alone, by virtue of the fact that only the full course is part of the ADAC/SRO-organized Intercontinental GT Challenge. The pack is part of Update 1.10 to ACC which also brings updated liveries for the upcoming Alpine Esports series and a number of small tweaks.
See more articles on Assetto Corsa 2.
