Reminder: Ubisoft's Star Wars Outlaws Demo For Switch 2 Is Now Available

This company makes the most baffling decisions. They complain about lack of sales but good lord, they love to make all the right choices to minimize them. It’s a great port by all accounts so I’m confused as to why they won’t market it much and have the demo coming what may be well after release.

Never thought the reward for “biggest comeback of the century” would go to Ubisoft

@Coffeeglitch at least this is more consumer friendly

@Coffeeglitch Wait, because they're putting out a demo? Sure, if a person doesn't enjoy the demo, then they may decide not to buy the game. But you can also convert people who weren't intending to buy it before playing the demo.
I still think the more demos, the better. People might respect you more for not wasting their time and money on a gamble, too.

To paraphrase Morrissey (with reservations):

How now is "soon?"

I have really enjoyed playing this game on Switch 2! I hope this demo allows the game to reach more players.

I have no intention of buying this game but I am a little curious and know next to nothing about it so I might actually be interested in trying a demo.

@Coffeeglitch how is releasing a demo a bad idea?

@AussieMcBucket no the demo is great, but they didn’t even bother to promote what is apparently a really good port and are releasing the demo long after release. Given how vocal they’ve been about the lacklustre sales on other platforms, I can’t understand why they would send a good game out to little fanfare.

@FlyingDunsparce it’s a genuinely good game. Apparently it’s also an extremely good port, so worth dipping into depending on budget.

@StewdaMegaManNerd it very much is, I wasn’t very clear in my comment. It’s a great port, great game. I was talking about the late demo and the lack of marketing for it. It deserves better!

@Coffeeglitch Demos take time and pull resources away from actual development. It why so many developers have stopped doing them.

A demo? I think I'll give it try when it comes out.

Knowing ubisoft the demo with be out the same time the game has a huge discount. It is odd to see a demo sometime after the release of the game.

Ubisoft's upper management and marketing teams must have watched that GVG video and thought the Outlaws Switch 2 port was terrible, only to be surprised by how good it is when it released.

That's the only reason I can think of as to why the port would have near-nonexistent marketing prior to launch, followed by actual decent marketing well after launch.

I didn't even know the game was out lol.

Why not release the demo now? It might actually entice me to buy the game!

@Coffeeglitch I wouldn't be surprised if they were working on the Switch 2 version during or a little after its debut on other consoles; a RedLynx employee had the Switch 2 port as their project on their LinkedIn for about a years length. Since it failed on other platforms, Ubisoft probably bit the bullet as even they were a strong supporter of the Wii U a little longer than other publishers, but they're not willing to risk more money to advertise it (the Nintendo Directs were probably enough in their eyes.)

With the reasonable explanations of the game cartridges not being able to load in assets quick enough and the surprise quality of the port, I would have bought this if it wasn't a Ubisoft game that will inevitably go on sale in the coming months - this may actually have me buy it before then!

@Coffeeglitch Oh, haha. Sometimes demos come out after release. But yeah, they should have promoted it more, if they haven't. Though now it's getting a good critical response, so they could do a round with that argument!

@AverageGamer Surely a demo doesn't take many resources or much time to make given it's just taking a small section of the full game that's been finished with development (bar later patches) and releasing it on it's own? Not like it's new content.

• There will be no save game carryover on any platform.

WHAT?! Well, this won't make me download the demo, either. I wasn't planning on getting the game anyway, since it's a Ubisoft game. OR I might get it 2nd hand, so they won't get any profit from it. Either way, save data not carrying over to the full game is a baffling decision.

A demo is a great idea. Perhaps Ubi themselves are surprised with how successfully this game has landed... with even Digital Foundry giving it a rubber stamp of acceptable performance.

Ubi probably want to ride this wave, and convince those on the fence that this game is worth playing (via a demo no less, a great convincer when the quality is there to show off)

@Suketoudara From what I recall, Sakurai did a video in regards to demos and why some come out after the games released. Apparently, demos have to be made from the ground up so rather than having to eat into the main games development time, developers will work on a demo after release. I'm paraphrasing here but that's the general impression

Cool. I will see if I can handle 30fps in handheld. I cant on the TV but maybe in handheld.

I need the demo now to decide if I go for the much superior PC version or Switch 2 (thanks to portability and motion, otherwise I'd consider the superior Series X version).

I hope their "later this year" means 2 weeks.

The demo already exists on other platforms. I tried it. I even rented the full game on Series X from the library but decided I want to buy it after playing a few hours.
The game seems amazing.

Wonder if they came up with the idea because the game isnt selling well. Hmm....

@Pillowpants that's because the demo showcases a different part of the game and doesn't start from the beginning. It's a really good game. Ubisoft ensures that it's AAA quality and the rest is fun gameplay.

@Suketoudara Like what @martynstuff said. Multiple developers have repeatedly said that demos cut into development time. They have been saying this since the PS2 era, and it the reason we’ve basically saw them go away after the 360/PS3. It the same with the vertical slices we see at E3, and one of the reasons we saw companies move away from that format. Anything that isn’t working directly on the actual shippable product is a money sink with no actual real return value.

shame the demo is not available for Switch owners now, as its one of those games that you either get into or doesn't click .

it looks nice in places on Xbox but gameplay can be a bit hit and miss in keeping you hooked.

Unlike Fallen Order which feels like a Star Wars adventure more so. Shame really a s Switch 2 edition of Fallen Order and Survivor would sell well on Switch 2 i believe.

I like this game. It plays surprisingly well. Im not a full on Star Wars eccentric, but I enjoy the series (except 7-9). The game is perfectly charming. Definitely gets the vibe right. The gameplay isn’t probably deep enough to keep a hard-core rpg brain captive for very long, but as far as an exciting adventure game - this scores pretty high marks from me.

I'm downloading the demo right now. I'm going to give it a shot.

After another massive Ubislop layoff, ironically from Massive Entertainment.

At least this will add to their ever growing “player count”.

Hey @Liam_Doolan, what’s with all the scare quotes in the headline and update? Is the demo not actually free? Is it not actually up to 3 hours? I’m genuinely confused and the article does not clarify anything.

@Ramouz

You could probably keep most this to yourself and just buy a version.

@TrueBlueYoshi hell yeah king

Sounds intriguing; I’ll give her a go.

This game is really really good. Ubisoft made a big comeback on the NS2. I also cant wait for asassin creed shadows. Already played it on pc. Seriously one of the best assassin Creed games i have played. (Yes played them all)

My all time favorite is Odysey. But shadows has the second spot now for me. Will double dip on the NS2.

Wow just played 15 mins and Ubi have done a great job here.

The second this game hits sale price, as most Ubi games do, I'll be purchasing for sure

I wonder how this is doing on NS2. It's a good game and a great star wars game. It's a bit sad that they canceled the sequel and I hope the NS2 is a redemption arc for that game.

Free being in quotes like that is really strange.... is there a catch?

It's kinda like saying that you get SNES games with NSO for "Free" the free being that you have to pay for the service.

Wow, tried the demo for about half an hour and the game looks great in handheld, really good, but the best thing is that the game PLAYS great! It's been a really good experience so far.
I'll buy the game as soon as it's on sale. Same as I will do with AC Shadows (hopefully there's also a demo of that one).

Shame you can't carry progress over, but I'll give the demo a whirl and decide whether to pick it up on sale.

@Stormcloudlive Nintendolife just using a poor choice of words to describe the demo. It's a limited-time demo, you get 3 hours to play it and choose from a limited number of activities to get an overall feel of the game.

They really should have just put "limited time demo" or something in the tagline instead imo. There's no catch where the demo suddenly starts draining your bank account or something lol

I've tried it but didn't like it.
Stealth games are just not my cup of tea.

It looks great though.

Cool, will give this one a try.
Cyberpunk is on sale already, wonder how long we have to wait for this one to get a decent cut?

Had no intention of buying this but ive heard some good stuff so the demo is worth a crack I reckon

after all negativity its not a bad game. its solid fun game and looks good on switch 2.

Why the quotation marks around "free"? It is free, right?

@LastFootnote Same here, I kept scanning the article for the caveat that makes the demo actually not free. Weird choice by Liam.

Nice. £39.99 on Amazon at the mo as well 👍

Idk, dont even wanna try the demo, lol. Its a key card and I only plan on buying absolute must haves in that format. And this one is not.lol

Why doesn’t save data carry over, literally every other demo does that

@Jedrus_Lilac - I will also never buy a game as a key card. But I buy plenty of games digital (like this game), don't you? If I would only buy physical games, like it sounds you do, I think I would get rid of the Switch. So why do you stick with it?

I don't like when people do timed demos. But I'm still definitely excited to try this!

I had a quick wander around in the demo, the key thing I was excited to try was 21:9 mode as I have an ultra wide, but the image isn't 21:9 squashed into 16:9 which I could then stretch to fit on my monitor, instead its a letterboxed 21:9 and sadly my monitor can't zoom to fit. 😢 Oh well, given how many games have launched over the past three days it's probably a good thing I don't want to buy this as well.

Downloading!

@GCBB I ended up buying it directly from Ubisoft since they had a sale and a 20% discount on top of that. Came out pretty "cheap" for the Gold edition.

@SplatRay001 Because they're showcasing another part of the game and not the beginning. It's a customised demo.

@Ramouz ah I see. I feel like that kind of demo has become a relic of the past… I still remember the sun and moon demo on 3DS with ash greninja.

need to login into ubisoft for playing demo lol uninstall

I think the man reason the game is not selling is the ugly avatar. They should update it with some choices of avatar or character editor, so people can make the character look presentable. No offense to the model that the avatar is "based on" as she does not look anything like the ugly avatar.

Ok so the "free" in the original headline makes sense when you realize you need to create a Ubisoft account to play the demo.
I'm not doing that.
Was actually interested to try it out.
Uninstalled, guess I will have to wait to try this till I find it on the street or something.

I'm 20-ish hours into the game and it's never asked me to login to anything. Is it region-related?

@basswitch
If you are 20h in, then I guess you are not playing the 3h demo
The demo requires you to log in
But I'm happy to hear that you can play the real thing without logging in (you can't take anything for granted these days).

@TrogdorTheBurninator Ah, that explains it then. That's so dumb of them, they have to know that will keep people away from the demo?

Parts of it are really rough looking still, like the cutscenes where so many of the textures just jump in when they feel like it, the shadows on faces are terrible, and the haloing/ghost trail effect around a lot of things as you pan the camera, and especially how low-res her hair looks. Then parts of it are really pretty. The rough parts are enough to completely dissuade me though. If they can fix it (and let me have another demo) then I'm all in.

This has to be the worst SW2 port to this date. The infuriating Ubisoft Connect login is only the beginning; prepare for 30fps potato mode galore like never before.

And for starters, FFS, and the love of god, if the protagonist hair has to look like a glitchy patch of muddy pixels, give her a hat!! Oo

Honesty it was so bafflingly bad I couldn't pay real attention to the gameplay.

I cannot believe some people are actually going to pay real money for this. I feel so sorry it is making me sad.

Why in the world would I have to create a Ubisoft account to try out a game I might be interested in buying? What's wrong with them? Also why is this not mentioned in the article?

@basswitch I didn't say I wasn't gonna buy key cards at all. Just those games with must have status for me, like for example Persona 3 or Final Fantasy remakes.
No. I am not in the habit of buying digital games, altho I got a few like Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 4 - I own VC4 as card but it was cheaper to get the complete edition than buying the DLCs separately. I also own lots of virtual console games on wii. reminds me I should get the famicom detectives club game, they prolly wont be seeing a physical release

Why would I get rid of my Switch? I own over 100 switch 1 games, and the switch is not only BC but it also enhances some games if not all in some way. Nintendo is still releasing physical games and you cant get those games anywhere else anyway.

But yeah, I dont like the direction things are going atm, not just key cards but the gaming market in general. The switch 2 might as well be my last console. Thanks to the key card situation and the economy in general I am spending to way less on gaming these days. Not a huge issue if u own around 300 games spread across various nintendo systems.

@Dang_69 wait? Wut? U need to create a ubi account to play the switch demo?

@Jedrus_Lilac Ah, okay, I see. For me key cards will never be the choice. I prefer all digital, with the downside that the express cards are so expensive. So that pushed me to buy some physical games for S2. And for me, as a Star Wars fan without any other systems, this was a must buy.

@Wewewi Don't feel sorry for me, I'm enjoying the game. Yes, I see that the hair looks bad. For me it's playing on the Switch 2 or not playing any games at all, since it fits my life (commuting and sharing the tv with the family).

@Jedrus_Lilac yep. There's a login/sign up screen you cannot skip. It says you need a Ubisoft account to play. Just insane.

@basswitch hehe, I actually forgot about the express card issue, lol. Guess I will deleting and redownloading, lol. Happened alr on the s1.
I was a moderate sw fan back in the day. Really appreciated both kotor games.
But ever since disney took over I started losing interest.

@Dang_69 LOL! they sure make it hard.

Downloaded. Got to the account sign up screen. Deleted.