Nintendo has unveiled in a surprise announcement that Remedy Entertainment’s supernatural third-person action-adventure game Control is now available on the Nintendo Switch as a cloud-based game. Control was initially released in August last year on the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and received generally positive reviews and was subsequently nominated for several awards.
Unfortunately, the game’s publisher 505 Games has recently been embroiled in a controversy surrounding the game’s Ultimate Edition. 505 Games previously announced that it would be impossible for players who owned the Deluxe Edition to upgrade to the Ultimate Edition and receive the supposed free upgrade for the game’s next-generation version for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X. But in a recent incident, many owners of the Deluxe Edition were accidentally upgraded to the Ultimate Edition and revealed that it may not actually be as impossible as 505 Games claimed.
As for the game’s surprise release on the Switch, Nintendo made the announcement during their most recent and apparently final Nintendo Direct Mini Partner Showcase of the year. Control: Ultimate Edition on the Switch, which will include the base game as well as the The Foundation and Alan Wake tie-in AWE expansions, will be a cloud-based game, meaning players will need to have a sufficiently fast and stable internet connection to access and play it. Being a cloud-based game will also allow it to look visually better than what is expected from the Switch’s hardware.
According to the game’s page on the official Nintendo website, Switch owners can download a launcher application to test if the game is accessible and playable with the user’s current internet connection. To fully access the game, players will need to pay for the Access Pass, priced at $39.99, although that may be difficult at the moment as it seems like the cloud servers handling the game have a limited capacity and have already put players in a long queue. However, Remedy has already responded to the server issues and has asked fans to be patient.
Releasing cloud-based games on the Nintendo Switch is definitely a significant move for Nintendo as it will allow owners of the console to access games that would normally not be playable on the Switch. While there are people who won’t be able to take advantage of the technology due to the internet connection requirements, that many may not be able to meet, it’s still a potential step forward not only for the console and Nintendo but also the gaming industry as a whole.
Source: Nintendo/YouTube, Nintendo, Remedy Games