EA cancels Titanfall release in South Africa due to bad online performance

Respawn Entertainment's upcoming first-person shooter, Titanfall, will not see a release in South Africa following poor performance in the region during its beta tests last month, Electronic Arts South Africa announced on its official Facebook page.

"After conducting recent online tests for Titanfall, we found that the performance rates in South Africa were not as high as we need to guarantee a great experience, so we have decided not to release Titanfall in South Africa at this time," the statement read. "We understand this is a disappointment for local fans and will keep fans posted on any future plans regarding the release of Titanfall in South Africa."

"Performance wasn't as good in the area as we would like, don't want to sell you something that isn't great," Respawn founder Vince Zampella said via Twitter, adding that the studio will look further into it after launch.

Respawn conducted a closed multiplayer beta test last month for registered Xbox One and Windows PC users worldwide, largely to make sure that Microsoft's Xbox Live compute platform can scale up as high as needed. The developer then opened up the closed beta test to all Xbox One and Windows PC users to better stress test the game's servers under load.

All of Titanfall's servers across all platforms are on Microsoft's Azure platform, of which there wasn't a local data centre for the South African region. Australia also doesn't have a local operational data centre and instead will use the closest one in Singapore at launch. Zampella tweeted overnight that "we'll have good news soon for aussies."

Titanfall is slated to launch on Xbox One and Windows PC on March 11 in North America, March 13 in Europe and Australia, and March 14 in the U.K. The Xbox 360 version hits March 25 in North America and March 28 in Europe. The season pass at $24.99 will consist of three map packs. Be sure to read our preview for more about the game.