A report suggests that Nintendo has delayed Roll-Out of 64GB Switch Cartridges to 2019

switchcart.jpg


It's no secret that of late some developers opt to order a batch of small capacity Switch cartridges and force mandatory downloads on users for games that are large in file size (such as Doom or L.A. Noire), arguably killing the point of physical media. The reason for this is cost as small capacity cartridges cost less than large ones. The good thing about this is that the prices are not too overpriced compared to the prices of those games when they were released on other platforms. The other route would be when developers chose to fit the entire game in a large capacity cartridge without requiring a mandatory download from the eShop. The downside of this is that it results in what is known as "Switch tax", games sold for more to offset the cost of large cartridges. Currently the maximum capacity for Switch cartridges is 32GB.

In any event, games won't become smaller over time and seeing the trend of large PC/PS4/XBone games ported to the Switch, it has to be expected that mandatory downloads for physical media won't go away anytime soon. Especially not since a recent report from The Wall Street Journal suggests that Nintendo has delayed the Roll-Out of 64GB Switch cartridges to 2019 that were originally scheduled for release during the second half of 2018. Apparently Nintendo had some technical issues that impacted the quality of the final media and needs more time to resolve those issues.

The question now for the average joe is whether or not this will impact third-party releases. Developers whose games are larger than 32GB could either wait til 64GB cartridges are available, delaying their releases in the process (although that's very unlikely in my opinion), or ship their games in small capacity cartridges and require a large mandatory download from the eShop. Another question is whether or not developers care at all about 64GB cartridges since they would presumably and significantly cost more than existing ones, making it not worth it for them from a financial standpoint.

What do you think about it? Do you prefer games being shipped in a single cartridge without requiring a large download, no matter the cost, or do you not care if half of the game from a cartridge has to be downloaded as long as the price is reasonable?

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Jayro

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This isn't all bad news. By then 64GB flash chips will be much cheaper, so there's a higher chance that devs will actually use them.
The whole "Switch tax" thing I was led to believe was a thing seems to be a lie, as Gamestop are the only ones here charging a premium for Switch games. But maybe it's different in other regions where games are cheaper to begin with.
The Switch tax is real, all the accessories for the switch are 10 to 20 more than they should be, joycons included.
 

Xzi

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god beware they scale down the textures to the 1k the switch produces to make room...
You mean the 1080p that's still the standard for most displays?

It makes me rage that they can't spend a few more cents on the 64GB carts. I shouldn't have to download the second half of my game before playing it, this is ridiculous.
Very few (if any) games will need more than 32GB on Switch. Largest games on PC are around 60-70GB, can easily be halved when removing all textures above 1080p.

The Switch tax is real, all the accessories for the switch are 10 to 20 more than they should be, joycons included.
I can understand the price of joy cons, tiny as they are with so much crammed in there and technically two controllers. It's a fair criticism where the Pro Controller is concerned though, should be the same as competitors. Though that's really only $10 less, so you just have to wait on a sale. SPC also has the benefit of best-in-class battery life, but if they provide that at the same price as XB1/PS4 controllers, it's way more incentive.
 
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I can't see anyone but Nintendo using them, since they're so much more expensive per GB. Supposedly a 32GB card costs 30% more to use than a standard 50GB Blu-ray disc which the PS4/XBoner use, I can imagine this would be something like 50-60% more expensive, which will just result in either more expensive games or nobody using them.

Xbox One has a boner, huh.
Here in Scotland Switch games are mega expensive. Brand new Xbox1 and PS4 games cost 40 Pounds and Brand new Switch games are 65 to 70 pounds. Second hand switch games are still more expensive than new games on the other two consoles.

You can generally find Switch games for much less than £40, the only exceptions are like BotW and MK8D. BotW has dropped to £41 from my findings, but still a lot.

There are websites where people post daily deals of Switch games and whatnot.
 

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That sucks. I suppose the pricing of them would make this an understandable decision, but I think it's ultimately more beneficial to get them out sooner rather than later, even if it means they still take just as long to take off and for publishers to adopt.

I would normally say that those cards aren't all that necessary since most games on Blu-Ray traditionally double-up data to help read speeds, but with mandatory installs for pretty much every game (*gag*), that's not necessarily the case any more.

Ultimately, I think it could only benefit everyone to get them out ASAP, even if it makes certain games a little expensive in 2018.

Let's hope they start making 1TB microSD cards readily available for cheap soon, because you're gonna need fifty of them to play all the Switch games at this bloody rate.

Maybe we should stop making games so stupidly big that our libraries will very quickly exceed our storage? That happens too often these days, even with a ton of storage space...

One have to wonder if the secret art of file compression have long since been lost.
The only person at Nintendo that ever seemed to understand compression to begin with was Iwata. GameFreak sure as hell still don't know anything about it after a couple of decades.
 
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That sucks. I suppose the pricing of them would make this an understandable decision, but I think it's ultimately more beneficial to get them out sooner rather than later, even if it means they still take just as long to take off and for publishers to adopt.

I would normally say that those cards aren't all that necessary since most games on Blu-Ray traditionally double-up data to help read speeds, but with mandatory installs for pretty much every game (*gag*), that's not necessarily the case any more.

Ultimately, I think it could only benefit everyone to get them out ASAP, even if it makes certain games a little expensive in 2018.

Let's hope they start making 1TB microSD cards readily available for cheap soon, because you're gonna need fifty of them to play all the Switch games at this bloody rate.

Maybe we should stop making games so stupidly big that our libraries will very quickly exceed our storage? That happens too often these days, even with a ton of storage space...


The only person at Nintendo that ever seemed to understand compression to begin with was Iwata. GameFreak sure as hell still don't know anything about it after a couple of decades.
Compression hasn't been a thing that has happened with games for a long time. Compare things like SNES ROMs to stuff they used for Wii and Wii U, basically nothing was compressed. A lot of care or passion for programming was lost decades ago
 

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Compression hasn't been a thing that has happened with games for a long time. Compare things like SNES ROMs to stuff they used for Wii and Wii U, basically nothing was compressed. A lot of care or passion for programming was lost decades ago
Oh, I know, but it's a shame that is the case. I love high-quality stuff but at what cost? Apparently no cost is too high for devs these days...
 
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Prediction: Switch's library will pale in comparison to the original Wii library.

Hope I'm wrong.
I just hope it's not 90% shovelware like the Wii's library. Oh yeah, Monster Truck Madness EXTREME!! That's what I wanna spent $80 on
 

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1080p is 2K.
Not even close... It's literally "1080p".

We measure the vertical pixels, not the horizontal ones.
So technically, "4K/UHD" is 3840×2160, or "2K"
True 4K would be 7680×4320, and so-forth. But TV marketing fucked it all up my measuring the UHD screens by their horizontal pixels instead.
 
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Not even close... It's literally "1080p".
We measure the vertical pixels, not the horizontal ones.
So technically, "4K/UHD" is 3840×2160, or "2K"
True 4K would be 7680×4320, and so-forth. But TV marketing fucked it all up my measuring the UHD screens by their horizontal pixels instead.
Yeah I believe 1440p is commonly referred to as 2K now.
 
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Kioku

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Not even close... It's literally "1080p".

We measure the vertical pixels, not the horizontal ones.
So technically, "4K/UHD" is 3840×2160, or "2K"
True 4K would be 7680×4320, and so-forth. But TV marketing fucked it all up my measuring the UHD screens by their horizontal pixels instead.
1080p is Full HD
2k is 1440p. Or Quad HD
4K is Ultra HD

The naming scheme is weird.
 

SG854

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Not even close... It's literally "1080p".

We measure the vertical pixels, not the horizontal ones.
So technically, "4K/UHD" is 3840×2160, or "2K"
True 4K would be 7680×4320, and so-forth. But TV marketing fucked it all up my measuring the UHD screens by their horizontal pixels instead.
1080p is 2k if we use the horizontal resolution like we do with 4k. 1920x1080, 1920 is close to 2k.
4k and 2k are used as an approximation. 3840x2160 is close to 4k by approximation. And has 4 times the resolution of 1080p.

Did they really fuck up? It seems it was intentional to use horizontal resolution for 4k for marketing purposes. Instead of saying 2160p. They'll sell more tv's. There is no rules that say's use only vertical resolution. It does annoy some people though.
 
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1080p is 2k if we use the horizontal resolution like we do with 4k. 1920x1080, 1920 is close to 2k.
4k and 2k are used as an approximation. 3840x2160 is close to 4k by approximation. And has 4 times the resolution of 1080p.

Did they really fuck up? It seems it was intentional to use horizontal resolution for 4k for marketing purposes. Instead of saying 2160p. They'll sell more tv's. There is no rules that say's use only vertical resolution. It does annoy some people though.
It annoys the hell outta me, because it's going against the HD standard we already have.
 

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large games are simply an anti-piracy measure because they're becoming so large that none of my storage media can hold more than 32 gigabytes


Ahh... These thumb-sized flakes can hold more than any flash devices I have on hand!


What happened to the good old days where a good game would be less than 16 megabytes

...then again they needed huge-ass cartridges
 

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