Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Faruko
If you'll notice I said that 500GB of flash would probably push the price up to $399US. Vs what I'd assume would be around $299US for a 32-64GB SKU. So do the maths.

500GB at retail? ~$160US
64GB at retail? ~$20US

$140US extra and I've rounded it down to $100US extra. I don't think that's at all a stretch. And anyways @rallydefault was talking about a 1TB SKU with 1TB of flash. I don't think I'm at all wrong to think that such a large amount of flash would raise the price to an unreasonable level.

And note that I'm talking here about retail prices for SD-Cards which tend to use lower quality flash. Flash that at retail is ~30c/GB. You can get faster flash that at retail is closer to $1/GB. There was a rumour floating around that the flash in the Switch would have a read speed of ~400MB/s. If true that pushes it a bit closer to the more expensive stuff.

So yeah, $100US extra if they were to go with 500GB+ rather than ~32GB or so? I think I'm being fairly conservative here. In reality it'd probably push the price up a bit more than that. And given those cost limitations of flash? I think having an option for a HDD in the base when docked would be a good move.

Flash storage doesn't have to come in one big chunk. If each major title game cartridge came with just a little flash memory (say, 8 or 16GB) for game updates and save data, you could spread the cost of storage memory across a lot of individual $60 cartridges. That does not address digital-only games, of course, but physical media purists might be happy.

Speaking of physical media, I'm disappointed that the Switch only holds 1 cartridge. This means you'd be swapping cartridges all the time, especially if you're sharing the console with others. That's excusable for a true handheld like the 3DS, but something aimed at the home market should be more convenient. Maybe the dock could have extra cartridge slots?

If it's all done with SD cards, I don't find it too outlandish for Nintendo to just go with something like 32GB storage when the consumer can then easily buy whichever size SD card they want.

When it comes to internal storage, it was only a hassle with the Wii U because you had to buy a range of external hard drives from 3rd party developers with no guarantee of compatability (I mean, Nintendo had a list on their website, but even then some consumers reported problems), none of which have a cheaper option below 500GB if I recall correctly. They're bulky and either takes up another outlet or runs through the Wii U power (which isn't recommended). And it was frusterating that I had to buy it even though I bought physical copies of every game that had physical copies. I actually ended up buying an external hard drive that wasn't compatible with the Wii U at first, which was a huge waste of money.

SD cards, however, are a snap. They fit right in the console and you can get whatever size you want. Nintendo might as well low-ball the in-box storage and let consumers figure it out for themselves, and aim for that low price point.

flash storage tends to be extremely expensive on smartphones because they use a MUCH FASTER storage, mostly because phones needs a lot of writing and reading, while gaming should, in theory, use mostly reading which is the cheapest one

I dont think it needs more than 128gb honestly, as long as nintendo makes it clear that you WILL need more than that.

128gb might sound low, but considering how cheap are sd cards nowadays, i can see it being good decision to keep the "theorical" price of the console lower, just like the ps4 and xb1 makes it like "oh cool, it costs $299 !!! but you need an extra $60 yearly on ps+ or xblive", sure its not "mandatory" but you will probably pay it anyway or you have to because otherwise you arent taking advantage of all the features of your console

Lets just say they include 32GB of storage in the box. Enough for a bunch of indie/VC titles and maybe one big retail release. They then give you options to expand the storage via an SD card on the unit itself or a HDD in the dock. For about the price of a game? You can either get a 128GB SD card or a 500GB HDD. Which option do you get? Remembering that some people will mostly play this while docked and be ok with just having their main games available on the go. Others will want their entire library of games with them at all times.

128GB SD or 500GB HDD? I thought it was more something like 128GB SD vs 1TB HDD. For the same price, you can get about 8 times as much HHD, that's the general rule I've been using. 500GB SD cards (or those 1TB) aren't even readily available yet. Just a quick Google search showed no results either. So I doubt that's even a reasonable option when the Switch launches.

Expecting 512GB or 1TB of flash storage is just wishful thinking. It will not happen. The price of the unit would be too much for most people. Didn't you see the thread about price we had here? People didn't want to pay more than 199 for the console, and now we are talking about 399 or 499 price tag at minimum...

Keep your expectations in check and you won't be disappointed.

On Amazon standard 512GB SD cards retail between £200 - £355, 256GB cards £63 - £130

Micro SD 128GB cards £12 - £55, 200GB cards £70 - £80, 256GB cards £128 - £135

Cannot find a 1tb SD card at all

@Octane
1TB HDDs cost about the same as 500GB HDDs because they're very close to the price floor for mechanical storage. The same thing exists for SD Cards but it's at a much lower cost because of how much simpler they are. But you're right, in general it's around 8x the $/GB for flash vs a HDD.

For higher capacity SD Cards not existing it's a bit of a different story. They could exist and there's nothing much stopping them from existing. Except demand. If you want to store that much stuff? Odds are you are recording video at a very high bitrate. You're probably also doing it professionally rather than just as a hobby. So higher end cameras that record at high bitrates? They often have space for SSDs so they can take advantage of speeds of ~500MB/s. SDXC is limited to ~90MB/s

Anways. I'm not expecting Nintendo to include much more than 32GB of storage in the box. Possibly 64GB. I think a lot of us will go out and buy SD cards for it that are ~128GB or so. For us as enthusiasts I think supporting a HDD in docked mode would be a good idea. And I think talk of 250GB-1TB of flash storage for the tablet is delusional. That's my 2c

I’m buying a big flash card for it. I want to know if the read speeds are all they need to be before I do, though.

@NinChocolate
I wouldn't read too much into that given that all of the game footage was put in post-production. He didn't actually play anything on it. Though to be fair, Just Dance is a thing so they probably will.

no idea if it wa sposted yet, but:

If true, the sensor bar is here to stay a while longer. Isn't it possible to get rid of that by now...

Hmm... It seems more logical such functionality would be in the bottom of the left joy-con, so you could still use the face buttons. Or in the top of the right, but it would probably be hard to fit it there without having a finger in the way.

Edit: of course, if they have a button located on the "slide-side", which seems to be the case because of the way people are holding the joy-cons, then you would have your thumb on it. So it would be like the A-button from wiimotes.

Unfortunately not. To put it simply you can tell up and down using just gravity. And an accelerometer can detect that so your controller knows which way is up. But that's not enough because to know the rotation of something you also need to know which direction is forward. That's what the sensor bar does.

edit: btw the gyros don't tell you relative direction they just tell you how far you've rotated. You still need to know which way is up and which way is forward.

haha i watched several reaction videos and those are definetly the craziest! so funny to watch them parallel

I hope they are flexible on options for expanding storage. I prefer a lower price and lower internal memories if it means I have the option of expanding the memory as I see fit.

Meaning, I don't want to pay for extra space I won't use, I want to be able to customize according to my needs.

Although a little nitpicky, I must say I'd prefer any out-of-the-box storage to be completely internal rather than for them to supply a titchy SD card, which would just go to waste.

I really don't like the idea of a external hard drive plugges into the dock. It would make it impossible to use the system without a TV. It would mean I have to upload certain games to be able to play them on the go, which means digital games lose a lot of their convince. I don't see a reason for Nintendo to push physical games (where you would be even more limited in what can be in your system) when they get a bigger cut on digital and their reward program only covers digital. I will have to wait and see what they announce later for storage options.

They could allow hdd on the doc for stuff like Musik and vidoes.