Topic: Nintendo Switch 2

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was exactly like that.
It said on the box that it was recommended to install the game on the hard drive for it to work better (although I couldn't notice any difference).

@Grumblevolcano If that was applied to Switch 2 some games would be all on the cart.

FFVII wouldn't fit on a cart, and other publishers like 2K clearly don't see value in doing it. On switch 1 (and other platforms) they regularly put only a few GB if that on there.

Once you make installing from cart and option, it stops being on the cart because it's cheaper. This is just transparent

@Haruki_NLI If you're installing from cart, the cart doesn't need to have fast speeds. So you could have a slow 128GB cart that's cheaper than the current 64GB carts used for Switch 2.

@Grumblevolcano Bold to assume it would be cheaper. We know that from experience the cost of manufacturing a million carts at 128GB would cost the same as 2 million at 64gb. It's the same with other formats of storage, be it SD, HDD, or SSD. There is an opportunity cost to produce.

Take Micro SD Express for instance. Could they make smaller cards than 256GB? Yes.

Does it make sense to monetarily? No.

Plus let's say a slower and cheaper, but large, Switch 2 cart did exist....realistically, who is gonna use that, if by some miracle it IS cheaper?

We had slower carts of 1/2/4/8/16 and 32 GB on Switch, all with different levels of manufacturing (some were so cheap it was a chip not even connected to the plastic and just rattled around in there!)

But we saw time and time again, the cheapest option was almost always used. Forcing an install anyway.

We get to the same position without actually getting what consumers say they want.

No one wins, except capitalism. But it's a lovely idea.

Or we could just slap a Blu-Ray drive on the back of the Switch, people seem to think that's feasible. If course that means no matter games have to install because as slow as carts can be, it's faster than a spinning disc.

I think the "problem" with the idea of install carts is basically one of demand. Which is to say. . . Nintendo themselves doesn't need them ( because they make games that fit on a reasonable memory footprint ), and doesn't want them ( because they want to bootstrap the economies of scale for the actual cartridges ). And the third parties who do make games which need giant memory. . . are already not willing to pay the money for existing Switch 1 32 and 64 GB cards. And while you shouldn't need to invent entire new delivery formats to get buy-in on the Switch 2. . . big AAA publisher were only grudgingly willing to buy-in to the Switch 1 and its 150M+ install base. If the corporate culture is such that they are willing to write that off, then you aren't really dealing with a fully rational situation.

I don't think there is any actual solution, sadly, other than "Hope the industry has a massive collapse that kills the Photorealism Uber Alles mindset".

lol this did make me chuckle, but I'm somewhat out of sanity when it comes to this point: I do think the video game industry needs some kind of wakeup call.

We've gone from DLC to season passes to cash shops to digital licenses to ... who knows what.

It's the classic tradeoff: convenience over... pretty much everything else lol

And when that convenience also aligns with capitalist companies not having to spend as much to actually put the game on a cartridge, design and print cases, ship those cases, get those cases on shelves, etc. Well... happy days!

For the companies.

The install option only has to be a fraction of the cartridge game. I remember the original xbox and the fact it could cache 3 games so the last 3 games you played were much faster loading as the most speed critical code was on the hard drive. Any new game had to be cached again and the earliest cache was deleted. I guess the games were up to 8GB in size (dual layer DVD) but I think the cache per game was something like 0.9GB but that is only from memory I may have remembered wrongly.

I think the difference in speed with a Steam Deck between micro SD card and the internal SSD varies between 30-70% depending on title.

I tend to keep to physical media where possible so I can resell games once I'm bored of them or completed them unless they are games I know I will return to. This makes gaming much cheaper especially if you buy secondhand games in the first place so I hope my experience will not be too compromised buying Switch 2 cartridges.

The article that (at least in the UK) Pokopia had far fewer in-store copies than Z-A had and basically sold out instantly is interesting. I wonder if Nintendo didn't think the game would be as popular as it is.

High price and Game Key Card certainly doesn't seem to be slowing sales.

more likely that, based on a quote or two from different stores in japan, a lot of storefronts did not expect it to be as popular as it ended up being and didn't stock many copies

Looks like Yoshi and the Mysterious book will be $59.99 and 20.6 GB.

where are you seeing the price? first thing i found was it being about 50 gbp, which would convert to 67 usd.

...nevermind, i guess their 70 dollar equivalents are usually 58 gbp. interesting.

@rallydefault
That's a fair question, and the one criticism which I think actually holds water as to ways they could solve the issue.

At the same time I don't think it would be a solution across the board. Even Switch 1 carts of 32 GB capacity were prohibitively expensive, so I can't imagine many devs opting for a 64 or multiple 64 GB slow-speed catridges for install, even if they would be cheaper than NS2 high speed carts. I still think most games would inevitably opt for key carts (or digital only if those weren't an option). Though I do believe it would be adopted for smaller indie games.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book looks interesting. The art style is easily the best I've seen since the original Yoshi's Island on SNES.

When I first saw the new trailer I misjudged by thinking the bubble mechanic was the fundamental identity of the entire game, which kind of turned me off because I'm sure it's fun for a few levels, but I don't want the entire game built around it. What made me think this was that they spent so much time showing it.

But then I realized that was just the gimmick for a single chapter of levels, with each level introducing a new type, and that other chapters had completely different mechanics in focus.

Now I'm fully on board knowing that was just a localized mechanic and not the basis for the entirety of the game. If it's true the game is only $60 that's even better. Variable pricing indeed? For now I'm going to assume it's $70, but I do think it would be more successful at $60 (and I think this franchise deserves a lower price to entice new players to try the series out).

20 GB is quite sizable for a 2D platformer, but then I remember it's probably using native 4k assets from top to bottom which easily doubles the size of a game. And 10 GB is about what I'd expect if it were on Switch in 1080p (maybe 6-7 GB if 720p).

As for cartridges, I'd say just be glad Nintendo (and some select 3rd parties) still use native high speed cartridges which don't simply install from cart, but actually run from it without any installation necessary. That doesn't exist on any other platform. Only on Switch 2 will you still find games natively running off physical media.