Topic: Will NS cartridges compromise picture quality?

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about cartridges. Supposedly they're going to be 16GB. What happens when there's a 3rd party game that is 60GB on the other consoles has to be compressed to 16GB? Will they be compromising picture quality, textures, and content for space?

The cartridges don't have anything to do with this, if I am not mistaken. The picture quality depends on the GPU and the screen resolution.

To add to that, it is my understanding that 16 GB is only the standard. Larger storage sizes can be produced if necessary.

@EOTW I thought 32 GB was the standard size with smaller and bigger cartridges available should they be needed.

It isn't unheard that they produce medium with higher or lower capacity if needed. If I remember right, Smash in the Wii used a special double layer DVD instead of the regular DVD.

@FragRed It might be. I don't know for sure what the standard is, just that there are variable sizes.

I don't think this is the case for example PS3 games that were ported to the PS Vita cartridges looked terrible. However, games that were built from the ground up like Killzone Mercenary looked just as good as a PS3 game. I also think Zelda will look better for the Wii U considering it was built for that console, and now is being ported and compressed for the Switch. I wonder how they're going to fit the three Dark Soul's games on a cartridge?

@Luna_110 It works a bit different for optical media. Not all disc drives are capable of reading dual layered discs, so it's something that you should take into account when designing the system. For cartridges? It's a lot easier, more storage space means that it'll be more expensive to manufacture, but that's about it. You don't need different tech to read a bigger cartridge.

@Harbinger Well, games developed from scratch often look better than ports anyway. Same with games developed with one system in mind vs multiplat games, but that's often just bad optimisation. However, we've seen Zelda running on the Switch and it looks just as good, if not better. Nintendo is good at optimisation, so I'm sure that the Switch version will be the superior version, if they don't make use of the GamePad's features.

For people worried about cartridge sizes, I found a list of PS4 "non-indie" game download sizes. This is a graph showing how many PS4 games released thus far are underneath certain sizes.

Note that the list I got included some bundles which is why some of them are bigger than the PS4 disk size. But in any case it's pretty clear that a fair chunk of games aren't that big. Sports and racing games in particular seem to hover around the 10-20GB range. So I don't think the Switch is going to be too limited. Especially if 32GB cartridges are an option. If 64GB cartridges are a thing? Switch games would be at a capacity advantage!

@Harbinger Well, games developed from scratch often look better than ports anyway. Same with games developed with one system in mind vs multiplat games, but that's often just bad optimisation. However, we've seen Zelda running on the Switch and it looks just as good, if not better. Nintendo is geest at optimisation, so I'm sure that the Switch version will be the superior version if they don't make use of the GamePad's features.

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Do you believe these proprietary cartridges are just as good as Blu Rays? They should have given us the same drive the Wii U had, so we could have backwards compatibility. The cartridges could have been extra copies for on the go use. I might get some flack for saying this, but I feel Wind Waker HD looks better then this new one. I felt like what we saw should have been on the Wii U version, and the Switch version should look as good as the cover art. They could have even added extra textures like Bethesda did for Skyrim special edition compared to the vanilla release back in 2011.

@Harbinger
1. Are cartridges better than disks? Well it depends. But in general cartridges have always been better than disks in every aspect except for one. $/GB. If the standard Switch cartridge is 16GB and there are higher capacity 32-64GB options? (very possible). Then as far as us as consumers are concerned cartridges will be better than Wii U/PS4/XBOne disks in EVERY aspect

2. Game size isn't everything. A bigger game size means more space for content. Larger worlds, higher resolution textures and so on. A game that has all of these things can reach 40GB+. A lot of games only have some of those things.

3. Here are the download sizes for some games:
Bayonetta 2 - 14GB
Super Mario 3D World - 1.6GB
Smash Bros for Wii U - 16GB
Mario Kart 8 - 6.3GB
Wind Waker HD - 2.6GB
Twilight Princess HD - 4.5GB
Skyrim Special Edition - 20GB

Thanks for the insight, and taking the time to break it down. It's interesting to see how small Nintendo games are. I wonder if we'll ever see Destiny on the Switch. It's a 60GB game, and that's not including patches or DLC.

@Harbinger Doesn't mean they can't make the game smaller if they wanted, without compromising anything. 60GB is a joke, and again, that's just bad optimisation.

These are cartridges. there are no theoretical limit to how much data they can contain. i'm sure nintendo could easily build a 256GB cartridge if they really had to. though the cartridge would be very expensive. if they go for 32GB as a standard, that should be enough for almost all games anyway. i don't think the cartridges are gonna be an issue

Something I want to point out if it hasn't already is that the sizes of the games listed are uncompressed, so its taking more room then necessary. Sure it can get away with that on a hard drive.. But on a game card they could comperes files, taking less room then what it takes on a hard drive.

Sure yea, audio and some textures take a bit of a hit if its poorly done. But if done right its hardly noticeable.

As for what @That-crazy-guy, he's completely right about the fact that compression will be much easier via the cartridges.

But overall, do expect the big download sizes to be a problem on Nintendo's new console — it takes a lot to render 1080p assets.

Although I wouldn't be surprised to see Zelda being less than 10 GB knowing Nintendo's fortè regarding optimization with things like this.

Happy Holidays guys! I'm new to writing for the site so I hope you all tolerate me well enough, before the wait for the Switch becomes unbearable and I put myself in a hibernation chamber.

@That-crazy-guy
Even more likely games on the Switch will have slightly lower resolution assets in general. Purely because the system has less horsepower. In addition to more compression and other space saving measures going on. With games on the PS4/PC/XBOne there's no real incentive to keep the game sizes smaller. It's the same cost to ship 50GB as it is to ship 500MB. On the Switch there will be cost savings for developers who can fit their games on smaller sized cartridges.