Capcom’s announcement video for the Japanese Biohazard 7: Cloud Edition.
Capcom will give Japanese Switch owners a chance to play last year’s Resident Evil 7 on the Switch later this week. But the port will only be playable as an online stream running on Capcom’s own servers, rather than a downloaded version that would run directly on the Switch’s relatively low-powered hardware.
On May 24, Biohazard 7: Cloud Edition will be offered to Japanese consumers as a 15-minute free trial and a 180-day, ¥2,000 (about $18) streaming “play ticket,” according to a trailer posted by Nintendo Everything. The 45MB download includes streaming access to all of the game’s DLC but not the English-language translation, so most Westerners shouldn’t even bother trying to play from across the ocean.
Earlier this month, Sega’s Japanese Switch port of Phantasy Star Online 2 used a similar cloud server structure to stream gameplay to the system. This seems to be the first time an exclusively single-player game is being streamed to the Switch rather than ported as a direct download, though. There have also been cloud-powered versions of Final Fantasy XIII and Dragon Quest X for Japanese smartphones in recent years.
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