The Nintendo Switch Storage Management is Horrifyingly Cumbersome

The Nintendo Switch is a console that has seen nothing but success. One of the issues I had with the system wasn’t with the graphic fidelity nor the battery life. The storage capacity of the system and how many games could it support. It wasn’t a big deal back then. In fact, it was an issue that the majority of people overlooked back when the console was announced.  But now it’s starting to show its ugly head for new titles to come.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against major AAA developers releasing games like L.A. Noire, DOOM, NBA2K18 and so on and so forth. But the major problem that will be showing up, especially for players who want to have multiple games is the storage capacity of the Nintendo Switch.

It shouldn’t come off as a surprise but the fact that the Nintendo Switch has 32 GB’s of storage capacity is ridiculous. The internal storage capacity will end up filling itself in less time than you can imagine. Especially if you have multiple games that require a lot of space to be downloaded and played.

32GB Storage?! It’s not going to last a single bit!

Let’s start with the basics, you are required to have SD cards to play some games. We started with NBA 2K18, and while we didn’t know initially how much storage space the game needed. Players shook in horror and despair when they found out the facts once the game was made available.

A microSD card is required to download NBA 2K18 for Nintendo Switch, in addition to 5GB per save file on the system memory. The total requirements are actually very asinine in and off themselves:

Initial software download after purchase – 6.8 GB

Additional software update – 16.1 GB

Save file – 5 GB system memory per save file

Take note that the SD card is required regardless of if you have the physical or digital versions of the game. In fact, it’s more convenient to have the physical version of the game because otherwise you’d have to download the additional size of the game itself into the SD card.

Keep in mind that you can’t actually transfer save files from the console to the SD Card. So you MUST keep those and take from the System memory. With that said, let’s run through a hypothetical scenario with just NBA2K18.

Putting the Storage capacity to the test.

Let’s say you bought the game in physical form for your family to enjoy. You also bought a 128GB Sandisk SD Card. Okay, you download the game and start the software download with the update. That’s a total of 17.8 GB take off from the 128 GB space you have. Not so much right? But what about the system’s memory? You have to use 5 GB of Memory per save file. So let’s say that at minimum another family member of yours uses another save file for themselves.

That’s 10GB’s of Internal System memory used for NBA2K18 alone. And we’re not done yet, what if you want to get a game like DOOM? To see how amazing the reboot is compared to the original games. Well, it turns out that the multiplayer will also be locked behind a download as well. In other words, you’ll have to take more space from your SD card to accommodate to both of these features and some more space for your Internal memory to hold the Save file.

Since the specifics here haven’t been revealed yet. Let’s be more gentle and say that you have to use 3GB of internal memory, added to the 10 GB you are already using for NBA2K18 you will have to use more than 1/3’rd of the system memory for a just a couple of games.

And this is only the beginning considering the wide array of upcoming game titles for the Nintendo Switch. Once again, it’s not that I think that the fact that other companies are looking at the success of the console and trying to expand their horizons is a bad thing. It’s the fact that we won’t have space for multiple games and will be constantly deleting save files because we simply don’t have enough space to store the games in.

“Switch Tax” and the death of Online Purchases

Added to this is the fact that games are going to be suffering in regards to pricing due to the infamous “Switch Tax”. Which will increase the prices of games by around 20 more dollars. Although it doesn’t concern me as much as the fact that I’ll have to buy multiple SD Cards to fit on the games I want to play. There was an explanation as to why the cartridges can’t hold the storage thanks to Nintendo life. But why not increase the storage capacity of the Nintendo switch to at least 120 GB?

It can’t be due to manufacturing/economic costs, the PS4 Slim costs the same price as the Switch and it has a storage capacity of 500 GB. It just seems to be a sloppily handled marketing ploy to discourage people from buying games digitally. Oh yeah, I’m never going to approach the Nintendo eShop with a 10-foot pole now that I know of this. Because buying games digitally means doing a massacre to any SD card I own.

I mean, call me silly but I still will stick to my PC for multiplat games because I have a 1TB disk drive where I just have to download the game and play it. Not only that but Steam offers Cloud storage so I can uninstall the game any time and keep my save file without having to delete it entirely. Why do I need to bother about having to buy multiple SD Cards because I buy games digitally? It isn’t as bad with games like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey, but it’s still something to consider.