Topic: Disappointed with how many games aren't completely on the card

So they just announced Megaman Legacy Collection 1 & 2 on the Switch. I have some of those games on PS3/PS4, but wanted to re-buy them on Switch. I want my collection to be plug and play, without having to re-download games, patches, dlc and so on. Great, all Megaman 1-10 on a card.

No, Megaman Legacy 1 comes on the card, but the second one is a download code. The reverse is true with Bayonetta 1 & 2.

LA Noire is even worse, it doesn't even work without downloads, so having it on a game card is pointless.

For Bayonetta it's kinda understandable as both games combined would have taken up a 16gb or 32gb card for the megaman legacy collection however it's unacceptable! Megaman legacy collection 1 is only 400mb while the one you need to download (2) is 6 gb! Capcom is being incredibly cheap picking a 1gb card over a 8gb card!

I already own Legacy Collection 1 on 3DS, so I was really hoping for a Switch retail version of Legacy Collection 2. Instead, we got this weird half-physical half-digital release.

I'm glad we're getting the game at all, but I'm torn on if I should get it physically so I can have that cool box and screen cleaner (as silly as that might sound) or just get it digitally.

Also, things like this must be a pain for outlets that sell games used.

It seems to be a running theme that publishers refuse to use adequate card sizes for their games. At least Nintendo themselves do a good job of keeping their file sizes down. It's easier for them though since they usually don't have a ton of voice acting and cut scenes in their games.

I'm definitely of the opinion that if the game isn't complete on the card, then I might as well buy it fully digitally, but I won't pay the full price for downloaded games, and they'll only sell them at full price. It seems almost like the cost of the game cards are being used as an excuse to charge more money, because no one seems to be using the 32 gb cards.

@Agriculture I thought LA Noire works without downloads and it's just downloads are all the extras? (Like DLC and stuff?)

@darkfenrir nope, without the downloads the game doesn't run

@SVTornado Huh, okay thanks!

Sorry for my misunderstanding @Agriculture

I am very much not a fan of it either. However this is the direction the whole industry is going. Games on PS4 and Xbone basically always have day 1 updates at this point too. Fact is that it seems like companies really do want to phase out physical game releases and push people toward all digital.

@Heavyarms55 That's all fine and dandy, but the Switch doesn't have much inherent memory to begin with, and though it is really easy to just point at SD cards and say "Get one of those" that doesn't change the fact that the consumer foots the bill here. That, and Nintendo doesn't want people hooking up external USB's for the most arbitrary reason known to man: http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/10/report-nintendo-switch-... which I find outright silly (let's be 100% real here, they probably don't want that to sell Nintendo branded SD cards)

@MFD Honestly I prefer Nintendo's approach to something like PS4 with a set amount of memory. But I know I am in a minority opinion on this. I like that I can upgrade my storage as easily as buying a new card when the price drops. And the price of big SD cards drops pretty frequently. I got a 200GB one for less than I paid for a 4GB USB drive in 2009. By 2020 we will probably be able to buy a 500GB card for less than 100 bucks.

without know exactly the cost of carts its hard to blame the devs or agree with them

This is very frustrating. I've long since given up my obsession with physical media (it was real bad, you guys), but I'd still prefer a game to one thing or the other. Back when Final Fantasy X/X-2 came out on Vita with X-2 as a download, I decided I'd rather just skip the whole thing and go digital only in these cases.

The two Bayonetta games combined couldn't fit on a 32 GB card, same with the Resident Evil Revelations double pack. So in those cases, I can see why they did what they did. Doom is fine in my book as the single player is totally playable off cartridge. It's mostly L.A. Noire and Megman Anniversary Collection that bothers me.

Doom splitting the game was smart. Single-player on cartridge, multiplayer as a download. I really liked that as a compromise.

LA Noire and Mega Man? Nah. I'm not hot on Resident Evil or Bayonetta splitting either, but at least those are bigger games so that has a bit more of an excuse.

Agreed. I'm voting with my wallet and won't support those games though. It's absolutely ridiculous that something like the Mega Man collection 1+2 isn't on the cart if you buy it physically.

Honestly, as long as I have a box to hold in my own two hands, I don't care. Fact of the matter is patches and updates are becoming more and more a regular thing, and so do digital expansions like season passes or dlc. Few games are completely on the disc/cartridge nowadays, I believe.

Now, do I defend Crapcom for the way they handled the physical releases of MMC1+2 on Switch? No. But they are a company who focuses on making money. Simple and clear. So if you don't like their practices with a certain game, don't buy it. Vote with your wallet. But know that this strategy may affect the future of the franchise negatively. Now, we do get MM11 and its sales are likely what'll determine the future of the Mega Man franchise. We're also only getting a port of what other consoles have long gotten. So it may or may not affect Crapcom's treatment of the franchise if you vote with your wallet. I for one am gonna get this even though I'm not too big a Mega Man fan.

@EvilLucario Yes but if you want the bug fixes you MUST download the huge multiplayer update. So that is not good either.

They should've made it so the multiplayer is like a DLC and not update that is required if you have the fixes from the next patch.

Also the Resident Evil should have been implemented differently. Revelations 2 on the cart and Revelations 1 on the DL code.

@Dizzy_Boy Companies exist because they make money from selling games, they're not looking for an excuse to stop making games. And the Switch is selling, so it's a bit silly to think they're all looking for an excuse to stop making games for it.

I think the biggest issue is that most games require extensive porting, and game cards are very expensive compared to Blu-rays. I can't complain about DOOM. Once the servers are down and you can't download the multiplayer anymore, you can't play the multiplayer either. So it doesn't make a difference whether the MP is on the card or not. But I'm always a bit wary of games that require a download to be playable. There's no point in physical if they keep doing that. I usually avoid games with big day-one patches as well, I'll get the inevitable GOTY edition instead.

Fortunately there are still companies that make games that don't require huge day-one patches and deliver games that can be played day one without any problem whatsoever. If there's a small bug in the game, so be it, pre-internet era games were sometimes riddled with bugs as well. But if it's straight up unplayable without the day one patch, then it's a no from me.

The thing with the MMLC release is that the value in buying it physically is to have a high quality permanent collection piece. Making it half download (probably to nix reselling) completely negates that.

I’d love to have the collection available on my Switch just for the convenience of playing the games but I think the rational thing to do is to wait for a good eShop sale.

@Agriculture There's 4 factors at play that lead to this.

1: In cases like L.A. Noire, WWE2K18 that's the unfortunate reality of how bad western publishers have sunk. People blamed the size/cost of Switch cards but in reality that's the way they delivered the game on ALL platforms: Switch, PS4, XBox1, PC. Partial games on physical is now 2K's standard practice, among others. It's horrible, and it's disgusting and this is an abuse of the consumer because they can. It's not even a case where the game had to be shipped for financial reasons before development was done. It's a 6 year old game ported forward.

2: In the case of Doom, it's the economics of Switch cards versus optical media....they could buy a smaller cheaper card that way and make more money. However Doom did it really well. Why? Because only the part of the game that requires the internet to use at all is locked behind the internet. Not playing online because your internet sucks? No download needed (though it downloads it if you want the motion/audio patch so I guess you're stuck downloading it anyway.) Can't download it anymore because the servers are gone? It's the online portion anyway, so you couldn't be able to play that part regardless the campaign still works fine. And the online portions are usually subject to continuing changes and patches by nature, so most of the files in that download would be downloaded in other patches over time anyway, even if an old version were already on the cart. So that's a really fair compromise.

3: Cases like Bayonetta or Resident Evil, I'm not happy they don't include a larger or second cart, but given cart costs and the fact you're getting multiple games for the price of one, that's more acceptable...HOWEVER....It would be more fair if it weren't a download code subject to DRM and instead installed as a patch, playable with the cart loaded, so you could install it on any machine you run the cart on. Doing it as a code really breaks it.

4: Used games. So much of this is about trying to kill the second hand market in "creative" ways that hides it from the consumer.....the industry feels they're losing SO much money on second hand and all this and DLC etc tied to digital DRM is a sneaky way of making you pay the publisher for the used game if significant content needs to be re-bought to move the cart/disc between accounts. It's a sneakier way of doing what XBox 1 was originally going to do with a $30 fee to play a used game to re-activate the license. We ended up with that very program on all consoles anyway when publishers figured out they could ram it through with consumers as "DLC" and "unlocks" Megaman is worthless without that code, so it won't be appealing used....and THAT is the real goal.