The hazard of the Xbox cloud: EA cancels Titanfall in South Africa

Titanfall is online only, and that’s presenting some problems for the hotly anticipated sci-fi shooter.

On Tuesday, publisher Electronic Arts and developer Respawn Entertainment release the mech-filled action title Titanfall for Xbox One and PC (and March 25 for Xbox 360) … except not in South Africa. The game was originally going to come out in that country, but EA has changed its mind and is canceling preorders. The reason? Poor network performance during the mid-February beta test. Titanfall runs exclusively on the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure on all platforms, and Microsoft doesn’t have a close enough server cluster that can serve that part of the world with the kind of speed that a competitive online title requires. Those who made preorders are getting their money back.