Switch

Please don’t buy a $100 cloud game for your Nintendo Switch

Good lord what is happening in there?

A Plague Tale: Requiem released today on multiple platforms. It’s reportedly pretty good. But please don’t spend $100 for a cloud version of the game on Switch.

Cloud games have been a thing on Switch for while now, with some high-profile games like Kingdom Hearts seemingly forgoing a native version in favour of offloading it all to the cloud. Australia has (luckily) missed out on this nonsense, with previously only the Aussie-made The Forgotten City – Cloud Version gracing our storefront. That game, however, cost a very reasonable $44.95. A Plague Tale: Requiem will set you back an astonishing $99.94 — that’s in Australian dollarydoos.

The good news is that you’ll be saving one entire Australian cent over the PS5 version of the game. The bad news is that you’ll still be getting ripped off. For one, the PC version of the game – which mind you, is most likely extremely similar to the version used on the cloud version’s servers – only costs $69.95 on the Epic Games Store. It’s also included in both Xbox and PC Game Pass, which is also streamable to your phone via Xbox Game Pass, which will only set you back $15.95 a month, if that’s really how you want to play this game.

It also may not even work for you! The eShop listing says it may not work well, or at all, outside of the Sydney or Melbourne metropolitan areas:

Due to server availability, access may be limited to Sydney and Melbourne metro areas. Access outside of these areas may not be optimal or may not be possible. In any case, please try the free demo before purchasing access to this game.

There is a demo you can try out, thankfully — if you really want to throw your money towards a streamed version of a game that’ll definitely have some input lag, might not work when it rains (thanks Australia), and is useless without internet or if the servers hosting the title disappear someday, you can at least try before you buy. The same is true of Resident Evil Village’s cloud version, which will launch later this month and also has a demo available now, and the upcoming Resident Evils 2, 3, and 7, all of which are scheduled to launch via cloud later this year, if you want to spend your money on those for some reason.

But please, just don’t.

Oliver Brandt

Deputy Editor, sometimes-reviewer, and Oxford comma advocate. If something's published on Vooks, there's a good chance I looked over it first. I spend way too much on games and use way too many em dashes.