Nintendo is making quite a large push to encourage its customers to download their flagship games on the Switch, rather than by physically on a game card (which obviously has associated manufacturing costs among other things. During the Super Mario Maker 2 Direct yesterday, Nintendo even unveiled a rather tempting game voucher discount programme which will no doubt stimulate growth in digital sales even more.
If you are anything like us, your puny micro SD card is struggling to keep up with the weight of all these retail downloads. Sure, Super Mario Maker 2 may only take up 2.8GB of your precious storage, but some third-party games such as NBA 2K19 can take up 31.5GB of space, so Switch owners are turning to ever-larger micro SD cards in order to store all their games so they don't have to keep deleting and redownloading all the time.
SanDisk may well have come up with the ultimate solution for this problem, however; their newly released 1TB Extreme Micro SD card offers a crazy amount of storage. SanDisk’s Extreme lineup of microSD cards advertise 160MB/s read and 90MB/s write speeds so it will be more than suitable for your Switch, like SanDisk's other cards in the Extreme range.
But of course there is a catch; currently, the 1TB micro SD card will cost you a whopping $449.99 in the United States and £453.99 in the UK. If you don't think you can get away with that on your birthday list, you might want to encourage your loved ones to buy you a 400GB or 512GB micro SD card, as those prices are now beginning to get a lot more enticing. You can find lots of options to suit any budget in our handy guide for the best Nintendo Swich micro SD Cards.
If you happen to be extremely rich and demand the best, then you can pick up the 1TB Micro SD card here:
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Let us know if you plan on picking one up with a comment below...
Comments 71
@JaxonH does what NintendoLife don't already
Nowhere near affordable for me at this point in time but I look forward to being able to grab one a while down the track when they eventually are. Already filled up my 400GB card but I'm happy enough to just archive what I'm not playing for now.
Won't these be a quarter of the price within 12 months? For £300 I think I can wait. Still rocking a 64gb card here. Archiving is a thing remember - how many games do you really need immediate access to at any time?
I wonder what the commission is for a single affiliate link £450 purchase.
400 gb is around 80bucks, very affordable.
Would recommend that over anything else tbh
256gb is to small with the sheer amount of games available. Which kinda saddens me
Mine is 128 GB SanDisk and i still have a lot of space.
Cool that they're available but you could get an extra switch and 2 400gb cards for the same price lol. Though I'm sure the price will drop fast.
Consumer 1TBs took less time to show up than I expected. Still, that price. I reckon Black Friday will see some decent discounts on that, at least.
For the time being my 128GB microSD will suffice, especially since the vast majority of my collection is physical.
But the implications of consumer 1TB microSDXC cards is superb, I look forward to what we can carry in the future.
That's cheaper then I thpught it would be. Mean while the 400gb on Amazon has dropped below $60. I said I would bite once that happens but it would seem I could wait till it drops below $50 now. That happened much quicker then I thought it would.
Wow that’s a lot of dough.
The next Switch version needs 2 micro sd card slots. Two Samsung Evo+ 512gb micro sd cards = $150 or two Sandisk Ultra 400gb micro sd cards less than $120, problem solved.
I've still got a good bit of room on my 400 GB card, and at the rate I've been buying games lately, that should last me quite a while.
@Anti-Matter i don't buy 3rd party and indie games on the switch so this size is good enough for me plus i don't buy digital at all so i haven't had issues with the 128gb card so far.
however this would be more useful for my phone mind you but the price is crazy right now so it's gonna be a long wait before it's affordable lol
@RupeeClock the max micro sd card the switch can support is 2tb so it will be awhile before we start seeing them.
$450 for a TB is pretty cheap over all.
I paid more than that for a hard drive that was in the hundreds of megabytes.
@huyi
Yeah, that's all part of the SDXC specification.
SD was up to 2GB, SDHC was up to 32GB.
The 3DS is SDHC but you can somehow get it to read 64GB or 128GB micro/SDXC cards just fine.
Yeah no. I can get a new switch for that type of money
Wait like 18 months and you'll get it for $100 or less.
1TB is very ideal, but wow, that price is more than the console itself. Really hope this and other larger sized SD cards come down in price.
@Anti-Matter Same, I still have plenty of space on my 128GB card too. I mostly buy physical games, but like the space for some of the digital only games I want to play.
And remember if your not going for the 1TB micro sd you don't need the Extreme versions as your Switch Can't make use of the Extra benefits they have to offer. Just get the Ultra versions and save around 30%.
My 200GB card is full. I can't even record videos in Final Fantasy X anymore. I've been meaning to buy a bigger card. 1TB would be nice but too expensive. I think I'll go for 400GB next. Should last me a year or two.
Eep!! I was expecting maybe £200+ but £400+!! I bought my 400GB for around £55 when it was on sale 1-2 months ago and that is likely to keep my covered for a few years as I survived on the internal memory prior to that. I tend to get physical whenever possible anyways.
How does that price even make sense? I recently bought a 64GB Sandisk microSD card for 17€.
Assuming we keep the price-capacity relation proportional (even though the price per GB is often reduced the bigger the card), that's 640GB for 170€. Double that, and you've got way over 1TB for a fraction of the price of this card in the article.
I give it half a year before @JaxonH starts talking about needing to switch between multiple 1TB cards to store all his digital games.
Or... you could settle for a good 128GB micro SD for less than £30 and buy physical versions instead of digital.
I would argue a £450 SD card is probably the least perfect card for your Switch.
As this usually goes, it's pretty much insane to buy it right now, but this is how prices on the smaller cards get lower.
I’ll get a 512 and hopefully by the time it is full this will be cheaper. The good thing is this is just me adding space for other devices as well so they are never wasted purchases.
@Ralizah He's probably already got two on order...
1TB. On a micro SD card.
I thought I was hot s**t in middle school with my 128MB iPod shuffle.
Does anyone else ever wonder how/why computer tech seems to improve so much faster than like, anything else? Cars aren't hundreds of times faster or more fuel efficient than 20 years ago. Power generation technology has hardly changed. Same with aircraft. The only major change to refrigerators is that many now have a computer installed in them.
But computer tech? We now have storage 100 times greater than my first PC had in a form factor dramatically smaller and simpler to install. We have processors today that 20 years ago would have seemed like super computers and cost tens of thousands of dollars.... IN PHONES.
What Nintendo should do is: put 2 SDcard slots in the New Switch. This will save a lot of money by not wasting the old card after getting a new one.
Also, 2 x 500GB is cheaper than 1TB card.
I’ll get one when I fill up my 64 gb card but it will be for a 128 card
I just upgraded to a 256 GB SD card for 45 bucks so I'll be fine for a while. By the time the system is in it's twilight years the 1 TB or 2TB should be pretty cheap and I can just download everything to that.
I remember when a 1.44 MB floppy disc was huge, now this is just mental and for that price?? Don't think many will get it yet.
I'm doing ok so far with my 256 gb card. Most of my games are 1st party.
But if i ever need to replace it i'm definitely going to be aiming for this new 1tb model.
Alas is expensive, but only for the "extremely rich" is pushing it a bit to far on the scale lol
@Bunkerneath : Are you nuts? XD 1.44MB was only ever sufficient. It was never a "huge" amount. The most commonly used 3 1/2 inch floppy discs were released at around the same time as CDs, which store up to 700MB of data. Now, for the time, CDs were indeed quite "huge", especially when you consider the fact that a hard drive containing only marginally more space (at 1GB) was first available a few years prior in 1980, was the size of a refrigerator, and cost US$40,000.00 (not adjusted for inflation).
I remember in 2001 that I used to think how on Earth I could ever fill a 1TB hard drive. Fast forward 18 years later and I've have about 20TB worth of data in my possession.
So much has changed.
Still using my 128 gb card and doing fine with it for now, but I do try to be mindful of my space.
Feasible when it's $99.99
Lmao you gotta be kidding right???
If it was like £50 yeah lol
@NintyNate This kind of flash memory is quite expensive to produce, though.
The price will go down once the 2TB cards arrive.
Meh I'll wait til they go on sale later down the holiday season. Eventually SanDisk will have to dropped the price soon once they realize no one is gonna bother getting one because of it.
I bought the Sandisk 400GB microSD card from Amazon Canada when it went on sale last year. I don't think I'll ever have to upgrade that and it was a great deal. You can definitely get a full life out of your Switch with a capacity like that, and the prices are definitely coming down and it tends to go on sale through Amazon and Best Buy Canada pretty frequently.
Upwards of £450 for an SD card? 😱 No way; I might pick one up once it’s cheaper in a couple years’ time, but definitely not at this price. I still have plenty of room in the 200 GB card I bought with my Switch two years ago, even though it requires some careful space management (I only buy indies I really want to play, and try to buy physical whenever possible). Besides, if I had that much space on my Switch I would probably end up buying EVERYTHING digital and waste waaaaay too much money on eshop games I probably won’t have time to play for years... 😝
I just upgraded from 256gb to 400gb about a month ago. I'll upgrade again once the 1tb is around $80.
The card's image practically reads "the future is now"; I remember buying my first 1 Tb external HDD in late 2010, an almost Wii U sized brick with its own power charger - and now you can have the same capacity on the tip of your thumb and face no consequences of accidentally dropping it on the floor (I mean, unless it decides to leap away under the sofa upon landing).
That said, the prices are clearly not quite there yet - while I doubt even the most fanmouthed will quip a comparison to Vita (whose memory card in the range of 1 Tb would probably have you selling some real estate of yours), a Switch storage device costing almost two Switches doesn't sound like an optimal choice. Or like a practical one, to be fair - 30 Gb titles remain a minority. I've had to do a bunch of shelving on my 200 Gb card to make room for stuff like FFXII and SR3, but I'm still sitting on over 50 loaded games as we speak - from 33 Mb fry like SpiderSolitaire, all the way to juggernauts like Waframe, Skyrim and BotW, with varied stuff like WoFF, Valkyria Chronicles and Dark Souls inbetween.
@sanderev it's twice as much as a Switch it's ridiculous
@Silly_G I still can't imagine filling a 1TB harddrive. I've had my current PC for nearly five years now and it's still only filling up like 10-20% of that (the 20% is only if I include what isn't on it and is instead on my SSD). For many of us, 1TB is so much more than we'll ever need.
$449.99
I'll wait.
Great for those who want it, but this is overkill for someone like me who buys most of their games physical when possible.
just wait for 2 years... i'm sure pricetage will be halved around that time
As a primarily physical gamer I'll stick to my 200 GB card, and if I ever run out of space I'll get another affordable card since switching them is rather easy. Or get off my butt and play all those demos.
@Heavyarms55
I own a computer magazine published not too long ago that celebrated the fundamentally life changing invention of the usb stick. That thing had a whopping 16 MB of storage! Imagine all the awesome things you can do with it. Like storing 1.5 music files or something.
Sincerely, someone who used to own a big box of floppy disks holding one image each :]
I have a 128gb card that will probably be fine for the entire life of my system. I just buy physical anyway.
It is nuts how small memory is getting. Of course it all scales, and files continue to get larger. The entire N64 library fits on a 5gb flash drive....
One game this gen averages 20gb...
This is 100% on my radar. I have a 400gb card and it's almost full, believe it or not! So, not deleting games and having them all at the ready is a very desirable thing for me.
In 10 years it'll be $20. I shall wait or die first
@gcunit How do you archive games on console exactly? not like you can back up files like on a PC that allows multiple storage data
@BacklogBlues Or instead of using that kind of flash memory, they could simply give more internal memory I.E Nand flash
@superguy123 It should do the opposite, and make you happy that's the switch has so many great games 😉
How does 1TB even fit in that tiny thing? Technology is getting crazier by the day.
It'd be cheaper to buy a second Switch.
Well I know I will never get a 1TB micro SD card until it is affordable or I somehow get lucky at a garage sale heheh. (If that will even happen).
$450 currently works out at £350 ... so why are we getting charged an extra £100?? #SwitchTax
I got 39G left on my 400G card! Gotta make a move soon with many more games to buy and a full wishlist in the eshop!
@popey1980 our price includes VAT unlike the US one where Tax will be added locally at the point of sale.
My 64GB still has about 35GB left so I think I'm good for now.
@BacklogBlues The DSi nearly had 2 cart slots as a feature, however I think in the end they had no room for the feature.
So guess that would depend on how packed the inside of a Switch is......though I'd much rather they add External Harddrive support for TV Gamers. :3
I'll stick with my 400GB card until these go down in price.
Got my 400gig and a extra 400gig will wait til the 1tb drops more then what it is now.
@LinkSword Because you’re cramming 16 times more storage into the same amount of space. It becomes increasingly, and non-linearly, more difficult as you increase the storage while keeping the same volume, therefore the price increases non-linearly as well.
$449?? Really? This is going to sell like crap. Hopefully it drops down in price by Christmas
@RupeeClock just curious what specifics a 1tb sdxc will work on the switch- i have bought many versions of 1tb and not even half way does the card show errors and you cant save anymore games...typically after 14 games thats it and the card is useless.
So I have a MicroSD 1TB card my friend got but it would not work in his OLED, but in my first gen switch. We have reformatted the card, but still does not work. We have tried so many things, but still nothing. Is there anyone with some suggestions?
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