Topic: Is gta trilogy switch version all on a single cart?

I was thinking of picking this up but I hear it requires internet to even start up the game. Is this true? I suppose all three games aren't even on the cart is that correct as well?

Anybody buy it and can confirm?

Physical isn't out yet and it has already been confirmed that two of the three games are on the cart (GTA 3 and SA).

@Nin10doh

Oh okay I thought it was out physically. When is it supposed to be available on cart?

@Zeldafan79 I believe the 6th of December.

Even if they are on cart, on their current state it won’t be of much use.

@Zeldafan79 : Short answer, no. The packaging itself confirms this.

I have reasonable grounds to suspect that Vice City isn't on the cartridge as the pre-load file size in the eShop was something like 120MB while GTA3 was around 2.1GB and San Andreas 10GB. The actual size for Vice City is now floating at around 5.5GB. I suspect that GTA3 and San Andreas will be fully playable via the cartridge though (albeit the early bugged versions unless you update).

Either way, the cartridge will spawn three icons, however, Vice City's launcher will either not do anything at all without a download, or it may play the opening cinematic followed by a "Please update the software to play" message after the fact (which would explain why the Version 1.0 launcher is around 120MB, going by the pre-release file size in the eShop).

The software updates for all three games will add a good deal to the overall size anyway.

The sloppiness of these so-called "definitive" editions and the incomplete cartridge is enough for me to skip this. Maybe, just maybe I'll cave in at around AU$20, which is more than Rockstar deserve for this joke of a release.

The physical has been pushed back on all platforms and the switch port has been moved to early 2022. Plenty of time to get larger carts and include all games and patches on cart.

I heard about the shabby port job but it sounds like they have been working on patching it. The original games were awfully buggy too as I recall. I just wanted to make sure it's somewhat playable without internet because I don't have mine set up at the moment.

@Zeldafan79 You might be able to look up an all glitches video, and then you could tell if the glitches are bad for you or not.

@GameOtaku : I strongly doubt that Rockstar are going to throw out the hundreds of thousands of cartridges that they had already ordered to replace them with 32GB carts.

Hypothetically, even if the patches are included on the cart, any subsequent updates will be downloaded in bulk, so the trilogy will still gobble up several GBs of space for even the most negligible of updates, and because Vice City’s Version 1.0 is suspected to be a 100MB launcher with a 5GB “update”, even if Rockstar produced a cartridge with a playable build of Vice City on it, any subsequent patches will still require that you download the entire 5GB “update” plus the updates on top of that, however bulky they may be. The only workaround to this is if the cartridge builds of the game are separate to that of the eShop, but very, very few publishers have ever released their games in such a disparate fashion. I believe Waifu Uncovered and Perky Little Things are two such games that have cartridge-exclusive builds (as the eShop versions do not contain the more explicit content) and therefore such games are considered to be separate units of software (and would generate separate icons if one were to own both the physical and downloadable releases).

The whole thing has been a disaster. Meanwhile, the original PS2 releases are complete on disc. No downloads needed. Got to love “progress” in this industry.

@Silly_G
It depends on if they already had them ordered or not. Or possibly exchange the carts they purchased for higher capacity ones. There’s a good reason why the download required games remain unsold at every store I’ve seen and with the bad builds an even more reason not to bite on this physically.

@GameOtaku They'll be "unsold" at every store because the physical games are not out yet. If you're seeing display cases in stores it'll be for pre-orders

@dmcc0
I was referring to other physical download code only games and those games that require a hefty download instead of being all on cart like the Megaman Legacy Collection and LA Noire.

@GameOtaku Ah, ok, I misread your post. Most of the Code in a Box games I've seen have been older titles that've probably sold their initial physical batch and sales are probably too low now to do another run of physical. I haven't actually come across many cart-with-required-download games to be honest so not sure whice ones are sitting on shelves unsold. The only ones I can think of are Spyro and LA Noire - Spyro seems to have sold ok I think. I just don't think the general game-buying public actually cares that much about required downloads - folk are so used to having to download patches now anyway its likely no different for them.

@dmcc0
I’ve seen copies of Call of Juarez, Fortnite and MK 11 complete (the base game with all expansions) just sitting on the shelf and they are codes in a box. MK11 is an even worse offender as it required a massive download either way with the original physical having a forced download. These releases completely miss the point of physical and that’s you don’t have to go through multiple hoops to get said product.

@GameOtaku I doubt any of those games would've sold much more as actual physical copies TBH. Anyone that is playing Fortnite for example would've downloaded the base game anyway, so I doubt they'd go physical for an expansion (assuming that's what it is). Seeing it sitting on the shelf isn't really proof it's not selling either - you have no idea how many copies that store had to begin with, or how many they've sold.

As someone who does prefer physical on Switch, I agree the partial downloads are not ideal, and I would probably just end up getting digital in that case. But I (and most people here I suspect) are not your average customer, and I think the number of people that would avoid the game altogether rather than buy the "physical" or go digital is pretty small. The companies that are doing it must think its a pretty insignificant number otherwise they'd put the whole game on there in the first place.

These code-in-a-box games are different - they exist purely to have a visible presence on store shelves - more chance of getting seen on a shelf in a store than amongst the 1000s of games on the eShop.

In terms of the GTA physical I think it'll do just fine. Joe Public will just see a 3-pack of GTA games on Switch and probably just assume they didn't all fit on the cart.

@dmcc0
I’m more of the opinion Joe Public would see not having all on one cart as just lazy just the like the actual ports. Or alternatively they could have multiple smaller carts in a box or individual physical releases for the games instead.

@GameOtaku : I could live with individual releases at AU$40 or AU$50 a pop (as opposed to the AU$70 that most retailers will be selling the "trilogy" for), but I'd rather have just paid a full AU$100 and had all three games on a single cart. This was also under the assumption that the games wouldn't have been trash.

Incidentally, The Witcher 3 was recently re-released on Switch, and at full price, no less (AU$89.95), which I found to be a bit unusual. I thought that it would have been quietly discontinued by now (and I do recall the previous print being dirt-cheap when it was being cleared out by some retailers).