Topic: Theory: The Switch successor will be all-digital.

Happy Friday, everyone. I'm bored. Let me ramble.

I think we can agree that most Nintendo fans want the Switch successor to output 4k to their television, yes? Well those 4k textures aren't going to be free, or cheap. If you think publishers are having a hard time justifying the use of 32GB cartridges right now, well you can forget about them even remotely considering the use of 64GB cartridges.

Maybe Nintendo themselves will release physical copies of their games that have a file size over 32GB, but I think they may not.

No, my friends. You can have your Switch Pro / Switch 2 / Switch successor as early as next year...

...but are you ready for it to be all digital?

Discuss.

Most people I know who own a Switch are parents who only buy physical. Switch games are often given as presents to kids. Of course you can do the code in a box thing, but that isn't the same. I don't expect Nintendo to go all-digital any time soon.

@Magician If it meant getting things like solid 60FPS, HDR etc I would be happy with 1440p docked!

I think there is a reasonable chance the next console is digital only, it fits with Nintendo's tendency to take control, but as they are also quite traditional it wouldn't be a big shock if it still supported physical.

If it was digital only it wouldn't stop me from getting one, but I would continue to collect for my current Switch.

For me personally, there are more important things than 4K (such as frame rates), but I understand it is probably important from a marketing perspective. I think handheld should absolutely remain 720p though.

@PrinsPaddestoel I know what you mean but if it was digital only, you could do a nice box for presents etc. Imagine a little box with nice artwork, a manual etc as well as the download code - that could be a nice way of getting something physical for gifts etc.

@Magician Honestly, the fact that Switch carts are still too expensive, there are so few 32GB carts, and we've never even seen the mythical 64GB cart, Switch carts are kind of failure. And Nintendo has done nothing to reassure us otherwise.

What if the next gen Nintendo console has a dock has a disk reader, and saves the game to the handheld console? EDIT: although, I'm not really thrilled with the idea of fragile, degrading disks.

I've wondered how Nintendo would handle releasing inevitably bigger games physically on a successor, but a large chunk of their sales are still physical. Much larger than it is for the competition, frankly, which keeps Switch exclusives perched near the top of physical game sale charts every month in various markets. No way in hell are they abandoning a physical option.

I don't have a 4K TV so I wouldn't be thrilled if Nintendo's next console eschewed physical media for a feature that wouldn't even make any difference to me without having to spend more money.

@Ralizah

It'll be interesting.

Whenever the Switch successor is unveiled, the first thing I'll be looking for is a cartridge slot.

If 4K gets rid of physical media, I think i might stop playing new consoles at that point, but I am quite happy with my normal HD TV thanks

@Bunkerneath

I mean, current-gen consoles already have "physical" releases that are nothing more than download launchers. Let's not assume the Switch successor will be immune to this.

https://www.eurogamer.net/modern-warfare-2s-disc-has-a-whoppi...

@Magician Don't know how possible this is but I think they'd work out something such that the carts contain a maximum 1080p experience and to get 4K you need to download something from the eshop like how you had those optional texture packs for XCX on Wii U.

@Grumblevolcano Fair point. We don't know if AI upscaling will help prevent file sizes from bloating to the point where physical releases are no longer a consideration.

I find these sorts of posts amusing, just a complete lack of awareness of how exponentials work. I mean for context with NAND pricing, when the Switch launched a full 5 years ago you'd pay $450AU for a 1TB SSD or $100AU for 128GB. Now? A 1TB SSD is around $100 and 128GB is $25-30AU. And that's in spite of inflation. So it follows that when the die is rolled again we'll be something like 4-5x higher than we were at the start of this cycle

Basically, point on the graph where you think we'll land. Then ontop of that remember that we're likely talking about a PS4 spec, not a PS5 spec. And that additionally "4K" will mostly be a marketing bullet point and more likely something that's achieved through DLSS than raw super-high res textures

That's the context of this discussion. So no, I don't think Nintendo's next hardware will be digital only. Especially when in terms of the cost to make the console itself, cartridges don't cost anything. The cartridge cost is in the game and unlike in the 90s larger games have the option of being partly downloaded. Downloaded onto internal flash or a microSD card, which is also getting cheaper

I think we get cartridges with the smallest ones being ~4GB and the largest ones potentially pushing up to 250GB although I doubt there'll be much demand for that given the spec we're talking about. And I think it's probable it launches with somewhere around 256GB of internal flash.... but more likely 128GB given Nintendo's habit of being a bit cheap on storage. In any case, with flash being about the only thing on the planet that's actually getting cheaper? I don't think storage is going to be much of a limitation on Nintendo's next hardware

@Magician Please don't talk such blasphemy. Physicals which are just an instal links are worse than codes in a box

@skywake

But we're talking about proprietary cartridges, not just solely NAND memory.

@Magician
You do realise you're quoting a tweet from 2017 as a counter point right? When my point is that NAND has dropped by ~5x between every handheld generation (all of which were also proprietary factory-programmed Mask ROM like the Switch). That NAND more generally has also dropped by ~4-5x across the industry over the last 5 years, in line with that same longer term trend. That tweet right there? Replace 32GB with 128GB in it, that's the world we live in today

And again, we're talking PS4 tier specs here with 64GB probably being around the equivalent to the Switch's 16GB on day 1. How many PS4 games were bigger than 64GB? I mean they certainly exist but we're talking somewhere around 10 or so games. If you push it up to 128GB? We're talking 2-3 games

I don't think it'll be an issue

I think Nintendo likes the number of consoles they've sold with this generation, and removing physical games would severely handicap future sales. There will have be some sort of game ownership concession, like Xbox has done, where digital games you bought on Xbox One carry over to Series X. THAT could make doing digital only more palatable.

@skywake

Which reinforces my point. Manufacturing costs have increased, not decreased. Sony wouldn't have increased the price of the PS5 (and MS considering increasing the price of their consoles) outside of North America if not for the increase in manufacturing costs.

The price of NAND has dropped quite a lot recently according to TrendForce, which can only be good.

The issue with the Switch carts is that they are proprietary, unlike the cd-style media discs, so that will always have an inherent cost to factor in.
ZX Spectrum 3" disks were £2.99 at a time that standard 3.5" disks were 35p

@Skywake, what does small, large, etc mean on the graph?

@Rambler I assume it stands for capacity used, on the low end and the high end, with the dotted lines being the averages.