Nintendo Switch Has 32GB Internal Memory, Expandable With Micro SD Cards

Expected that so no surprises.

A bit low for internal memory, hoped for at least 64GB (likely in a future iteration) but at least expandable and via an affordable format.

Absolutely brutal. 32GB is nowhere near enough in this day and age. They've passed on another added expense onto the consumer. 128GB memory cards and larger are expensive.

I do like this solution. SD card support is why I have eight retail downloads on 3DS and zero on Wii U.

I'm not touching a 256 card till they come in under 100$. Still way too expensive and looks like I will be going mostly physical this time around.

This isn't bad at all, as has been pointed out before... using this kind of memory the game carts will allow file sizes to be smaller & use less RAM to load things in.

However, I would have hoped for a memory card to come with it so we could have at least double that memory. Does feel a little stingy.

The games are on cards, so I guess it's not too worrying if you buy physical. Nice that they use SD cards for expansion ...my favourite storage medium.

299$ and 32Gb !!! Come on Nintendo ... it's 2017 !!!!

@SLIGEACH_EIRE I know right! I really don't like how Nintendo is being cheap and forcing the consumer to pay for memory like this

That's a whopping 2 games you can download. Nintendo is so generous

32 GB by default. Hm...
Because Switch can accept bigger size of SD card, i'm glad to hear.

I'm a physical buyer, but why Nintendo why?

I hope I can plug a hard drive into the dock for when playing the switch on the TV. And hopefully downloaded games can be moved/synced from the hard drive to a memory card for playing on the go.

I wonder if it's compatible with the new 512gb micro sd cards?

@Spoony_Tech But they are well below $100 in many places. Even Amazon sells them below $100

Nintnedo, sometimes is all about perception. It will cost you 10 bucks per system to upgrade from 32GB to 128GB. To a consumer, it costs like 20 bucks getting a good 32GB card. Please fix it!!

Cool, I have a 128GB kicking around. Thank you for the free 32GB card Nintendo.

@Timppis I guess it's been a while since I've looked but I've learned my lesson and will only go with SanDisk or Samsung.

Although the crap internal storage is disappointing, I'm not worried about it. SD cards are just fine by me.

I have a 128GB micro card, but I have that in use...for something else lol. So this means I will have to buy another one (they are still pricey) or I'll just will buy only retail games which kind of sucks because I bet they are going to do some "digital-only" titles again as we seen with 3DS.

As expected.

I would expect at least 64GB but 32GB seems fine, I just hope their games doesn't come with a 10-20GB install like most on the PlayStation 4. Since it's on cartridge I wouldn't expect that.

That's a bit low but I'm sure it shaved off a few dollars from the retail price. I'll just load up on some larger SD cards come black Friday. The 128 gb cards were available for $15. I imagine that the ever falling prices of flash memory will make even the 256 gb cards more affordable by then.

Congratulations Nintendo. You've made a console that sells for the same retail price as the 500GB PS4 which comes with: a bluray player for family movie nights, and better specs. Smart.

Im ok with this as long as its future proofed (say support for up to 512Gb), hopefully they will have a way of downloading game updates to a games cartridge leaving the extra storage for downloaded games/vc titles etc

@Alpha989 Can you take that console you speak of out of its dock and take it with you?

No offense, im glad that they're allowing more than 32gb cards (really Ninty, the 3DS needs more space...) but they need to perhaps have optional space. like 32GB for the system and stuff you want to take in offscreen mode, with the card holding auxilliary data that you might want to use on the go.

Even i wonder how much batterylife we're getting out of constant card reads, let alone how many the card can endure before it fails. logically External drives might suffer from the same problem as well as being externally powered...

Guess it's either portability, or stabability/storage. it would be nice to have the choice however. kind of hoping that the dock has a dedicated slot that can house the cable+connects to the Switch.

@genoist Is a gimmick worth sacrificing making an on-par console that's worth as much as it costs compared to the competition?

I am completely happy with this. I hope that 512GB or 256GB is supported, but I certainly expect 128GB to be supported and that should be enough for me. I think I only have a <i>64GB</i> in my 3DS and I am only now filling that up, and I just ceared 15GB of junk Demos and stuff.

Either way, the cost of the MicroSD will only go down. The longer you hold out, the cheaper it will be later. I like this idea more than releasing another system in a year that is simply (+500 GB) like PS4 and XboxOne did.

*Edit: I realized that I only could have a 32GB. I have that ._.;

They need to confirm the max size card soon. 3DS could only go up to 32GB (64GB if you use a trick) so it'll be locked to a max size.

Big question too is will they stick to the 300 downloads at a time limit? Not that we'll see that many games anytime soon, but would be nice to know.... XD

@Spoony_Tech That is definitely not a bad principle to go with when considering SD cards

It all depends on how big the games are. If they're of the size of ps4/xbox one games then we're knackered. If they're a similar size to Wii U games we're OK.

With game sizes what they are I don't have enough space on either my PS3 or Wii U 500GB drives (travel a lot for work so downloading is a way better option than physical for me). I was kind of hoping for non-micro SD compatability, the micros are so expensive.

Is it a card or internal? If internal does a new card turn it off, like Wii U does with external HDD and thumbdrives?

It seems like a good solution to keep costs down. I'm much more concerned about the 3 hour battery life

@Angelic_Lapras_King @Plucky I have a 64GB card in it and it works fine?! It is not even half full and there are around 20 games on it.
If we are talking these game sizes with the switch we are totally fine. PS4 and Xbox (third party) stupidly big game sizes and we are doomed xD

@Alpha989 Arguably, you're buying it instead of two consoles, which is a surprisingly practical financial bonus of the so called 'gimmick'. I think some games were released on both Vita and the home console PlayStation, meaning you had to not only buy two systems, but also two copies of the game if you wanted big screen AND portable functionality.

So... there's that.

Nintendo, you can't keep doing this, 32GB is not enough for a console in 2017, 500GB is the standard minimum at this point, even then with patches and DLC and all that, that's still not enough for some people. This is concerning, I don't want to see Nintendo fail, but I think the Switch may be their last chance before having to become just another third-party developer. I hate to say that, I love Nintendo, but with all the screw ups over the past decade (let's face it, the Wii was mostly pure luck, they just brought it out at the right time), this may be the last chance before they have to either fall back onto their handheld lineup or become strictly a software developer, and only having a measly 32GB of storage may be a sign that they're still too far behind the times to continue making consoles, and this might just be one of the many things they've messed up. Hopefully I'm just being too pessimistic and things go well, I mean people seem hyped for this (I'm just excited as a Nintendo fan to get a new console from them) and this could be the only thing they mess up, hopefully that's the case. Regardless, I'm still getting one for the first party Nintendo games.

Get a frickin' hard drive or 64 GB SD card people.

@Kazan2112 you could use larger cards, i just mean that mechanically, Nintendo only enabled the 3DS to have a maximum amount of 32GB. to use a higher capacity card would mean partitioning as well as formatting it in something like FAT32 to use. (EDIT: it doesn't mean that you get to use both parts of the 32GB partitions. it might even potentially cause corruption, if that's only a warning)

Maybe it has something to do with the existing firmware, or how the filesystem works. but if it's anything like the Wii U, you'll need to have larger cards to store games. like Pokemon Sun/Moon are 3.2+ GB alone, it could be potentially easy if someone is going for more niche, but spacier games like the Bravely, Monster Hunter or even any game by Atlus.

Might just be easier to fill up if you're a digital purchaser.

@Timppis I'm not seeing anything less then 137$ on Amazon for a 256gb. That makes the system cost well over 400$. Now I did see a 200gb for 70$ and that's doable but still crazy when you realize how cheap it was to expand the Wii U's memory and expand it by 4 times that amount.

Oh my god! What is Nintendo thinking? This console keeps getting worse by the minute.

With native SDXC support, 256 GB cards should be no problem to set up on the S(and)witch. Even the 3DS can technically support 128 GB SDXC cards by reformatting them to FAT32!

@peeks seriously? Checked how much iPhone with 32gb cost recently? This price for a portable home console is amazing even with 0gb

@Aerona Yeah, taking my Wii U, GamePad, and EHD to a friend's house to play local multiplayer is a pain, and now I can just bring the controller, assuming he has a dock.

@Alpha989 this gimmick nonsense claim may have worked (barely) with motion control or two screens but portability is king. Blu ray a freaking gimmic from Middle Ages.

I don't think it will affect sales, but it's definitely going to be frustrating. I just don't know how they think 32GB is good enough. The Xbox 360 launched with 20GB and that was 12 years ago.

@Peach64 that's because this is portable with cartridges and you can use like and easily switch in a sec a thousand cheap sd cards that anyone has laying around. Has nothing to do with HD sizes or xboxes.

@Spoony_Tech There's 64 GB SDXC cards out there for $20 (for 80 MB/s read) or $25 (for 95 MB/s read), get four of those and that's $80-100 for 256 GB of flash storage that's comparable to SSD speeds when it comes to loading game files, and several times faster at loading game files than HDD's. (That's the same price bracket as a 256GB SSD, as well!) Those expensive 150 MB/s cards are the only ones worth getting at 128+ GB, since 90 MB/s is a bit too slow with more capacity on one card. ($60 for an 128GB, 150 MB/s, Class 10, UHS-II/U3 card would be a fair premium.) And that's when they're not on sale, just wait for any holiday sale...

But who pays attention to loading times, right? I may as well call into the void... HDD's may be cheap, and hold lots of storage, but they're garbage for loading game files from. The S(and)witch is going to load games faster than the PS4Pro...

No matter what they did you all would have found something to complain about

I can live with that. This will keep the cost of the console lower, and SD cards are no hassle (and gets cheaper and cheaper).

Well, at least it's not 8GB... I wonder what size data each game takes up. I'll probably just buy physical only.

Horrendous. Absolutely horrendous.

Slightly off topic but does anybody know if game saves are stored on the game cards? I'm presuming so like 3DS, which would be good. I'm still catching up on the mostly disappointing Switch news.

I'm surprised so many people are surprised at this. It has to be solid state storage due to the portability aspect and anything big enough to actually install a library of full retail games is going to jack up the price considerably. Meanwhile, the price of SD cards drops as technology improves.

I'm not saying 32 is "fine", because more is always convenient, but it is hardly a shock.

HDD's will still be usable by connecting them to the dock... But honestly, I wouldn't use them these days for anything more advanced than Wii titles. Their read/write rates these days are garbage. HDD's are almost categorically rated at around 60 MB/s tops for read/write speeds for simple sequential read/write (in other words, game saves), and no more than about 1.5 MB/s read/write speeds for 4K (no, not 4K displays) random (in other words, modern game file loading), which is what modern flash and SSD's specialize in. HDD's are just absolute, total garbage performers at this point...

But who am I kidding, how many people here actually pay attention to things like 150 MB/s, Class 10, UHS-II/U3 SDXC cards performing several times faster at saving and tens of times faster at loading files on the fly than HDD's? One of those with 128GB is $60 right now, just wait for a holiday sale if you're broke.

i don't know what people are talknig about Micro SDXC card goes up to 2Tb with exFAT file table (wiki source).
And people are still forgeting that unless you plan you use mostly digital games this space size doesn't matter that much. Data access speed on gamecard is exactly what Optical disc game seek by copying game data on internal memory. Theorically switch will not need at all to copy game data on internal memory .

Nintendo has to emphasize, and emphasize hard, that using cartridges means that the Switch will be able to bypass the mandatory installs of the PS4 and XBO, for a savings of 10-50GB of storage space per game (at least for physical copies). That adds up fast, and wins in the long run.

A serious gamer will still want additional space, so that does come at a cost, but it's still a key tech advantage.

@Fath Not to mention you won't get slapped across the face with 60-80 second loading times every time you die in a big game like Witcher 3 or Watch Dogs on a S(and)witch...

That is disappointing. The Switch isn't going to be able to store much in the way of games.

This is going to increase console price of another 70 euro for an almost mandatory sd card

So it's 720 screen and 3hrs playtime on zelda

32GB internal is shockingly low, plus the console will cost £280 (which is too much) and they want you to spend another £120 to buy, say a 256GB SDHC card? I'm sorry but this where the portable/console hybrid thing falls down a bit. For AAA titles you will almost certainly be restricted to buying physical copies as you will very quickly run out of memory space.

Its hard to justify this spend when I bought a PS4 a few months ago with 1TB of internal memory and 3 games for £225.

Moving away from a day 1 purchase.
280 pounds with no game. I need to buy games then need to buy additional storage at least it will come with power supply.

This is just near double the price of my PlayStation.

In regards to the complaints, at least they're giving us SD Card alternative storage compacity, something the WiiU lacked. (Instead forcing us to get $60/$80 unofficial hardrive storage devices...)

Seriously, I can't even get all the games I want unless I delete SSB & such off mine. I wish I COULD put SSB for WiiU on an SD Card! (13GB game.) So honestly the Switch is a major improvement.

If you'reonly downloading VC and indie games, then 32 gig should be fine.
Thing is, who really wants to be messing around taking the Switch out of the dock every time they want to change games, or having to buy a wallet for their games when they go out somewhere.

So not only are Nintendo wanting £279 in the U.K. For the Switch, they also only put a measly 32GN storage on the system, I think that's very poor tbh, the PS4 & Xbox one S basic models have 500GB for less than £200
I may get a Switch in a year or two, but after weighing up my options, I opted for a PS4 slim console

Perfectly happy with this. If I can expand the internal storage up to 128GB with a cheap MicroSDXC and the cartridges will sport their own storage per game as well....no worries for me. Especially if we can easily swap MicroSD's out.

Folks keep bringing up Sony and Microsoft with their much bigger storage options, but Nintendo games arent known to be so bloated that one game install will take up 40+ GB with a day1 patch taking an additional 6+ GB.

Is there a reason why Nintendo didn't consider cloud storage? Not only is it cheaper, but you get way more space than ever (I use the OneDrive, and I have 1 terabyte of storage for free).

150+ for a 256Gb MicroSD...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4P05264218

That's unacceptible Nintendo.

I like the solution. Its a shame for those that buy digital mostly, but for those that buy physical, extra storage only jacks up the price without being something useful.

Now, I can get a SD card according to what I need, and since there's no hurry, I'll wait to get one on sale.

Sony and Microsoft need so much space because of that installation and patch nonsense. I do hope Nintendo doesn't acquire that bad habit of requiring install.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo........................... I've been put off it now, damn you Zelda looking so good to me can't do no wrong.
Wait maybe a year or so when it gets cheaper and maybe an updated version with bigger storage.

Zelda
Zelda
Zelda

Awwwww damn Zelda looks too good not to be a day 1 purchase!!!!!

@Alpha989 With a game.

Classic Nintendo, one step forward two steps back.

Easier to make backups of SD cards. Works for me even though 32 is low.

I'm fine with the screen res, as that'll help improve battery life, which is something that Nintendo has become absolutely horrible at doing nowadays.
However that storage is just plain AWFUL. 32 internal is nowhere close to being enough and micro SD storage still isn't big enough for mainly digital gamers.
Then again, Nintendo's sorry excuse for an "account system" will drive most people to do physical most of the time anyway.

@Timppis
I'm pretty sure you're mistaking 200 GB uSD cards for the 256 GB ones. 256 GB cards are still over $100,unless you're cautious enough to buy one from an eBay seller with a good reputation, as people who bought last year's Galaxy Note got the card for free with many of them choosing to auction them off on eBay. I got one myself from eBay, however I'm using it for my GPD Win, which will serve me far better than Nintendo's effort ever could.
Though if course 256 GB fullsized SD cards are under $100, but those won't work here.

Kinda expected. I'll just get a cheap 32GB micro SD to start, then if storage becomes an issue, I'll pick a larger one.

I'm gonna spring for the 256gb card early. I'm so sure I'll need it.

Nintendo spends all the budget on gimick finicky controllers.... Skimps on the actual hardware!!!!!

I like it. Keeps the costs down and allows people who just have to only download their games the option of keeping a small install base or shopping for a large capacity class10 microSD card. It's just smart. Many will buy the games (more than not) in physical format and not being discs it won't need an install, so you won't be eating GBs of data at a time storing crucial files like on PS4 and One.

@AVahne

You are absolutely right. I was looking wrong things. Cheapest I found was $139 because I first had some non micro cards.

My mistake.

Physical purchases it is, hopefully they don't have monstrous DLC/patch sizes that eat up the 32GB quickly.

will buy all physical, i love to collect them lol and share with friends.
Dont forget that Cartridges save on its cartridges not on a external card. Loading is much faster.

@Kazan2112 Yes, but I already filled the 300 download limit on both my main 3DS and Wii U. Just annoying how my 360's 2TB Harddrive can handle having 400+ games that can be loaded anytime while Nintendo either wants you to delete games, swap out storage (A pain for New 3DS XL) or buy another system. XD

Morons comparing the 32gb to what a xbox one requires...You don't need to install these games like you do on the other systems! The others are limited by slow Blu ray tech.... get informed before making stupid statements.

I'm going all physical unless My Nintendo ever gives me a very good reason not to. I love cartridges. I find a cheap cartridge wallet and I'm all set.

@Plucky Nintendo only allowed 32GB? That really is a thing? Huh never knew. i got like 111867 "Block" free on the card...buuut i am not the digital only guy ^^

@Angelic_Lapras_King i did not know about the 300 games limit either...that is so nintendo :-/

Jesus that's barely anything. I bet Zelda will be AT LEAST half that space LOL!

@Plucky I have a 128GB card formatted to FAT32 (no need to partitioning, where did you read that?). And I've been using it with my 3DS since 4 years ago.

Working wonderfully right now. As I'm a digital only consumer (every AAA game I like is in digital), this is really great since I have a lot of games in my 3DS.

Of course, there's that "hard" limit of 300 apps installed at the same time, but that only means I'm sure I'll never run out of space. For example, I have installed RE: Revelations, Street Fighter 4, Pokémon Sun, Monster Hunter 3, Monster Hunter 4, Monster Hunter Generations, Bravely Default, Bravely Second, Fire Emblem Fates and Metal Gear Solid (huge games in terms of disc space, 2+ GB each) and I'm still left with enough space for nearly every other AAA game out there! Specially since Mario and Zelda games weight less than 600 MB each.

About the 32GB card mentioned as the "max" size by Nintendo for the 3DS, it's because it's the max size they tested, not that it should be limited to only read that data space.

@Kazan2112 Yeah, I'm guessing its a "loading all the icons" issue, but they could have done something better like a sub menu to put your completed games in or whatever. Its fine if you want to delete a game to make room for a new one, but I'm the kind of guy who prefers all his downloads to be ready to load at anytime and if they shut off the eShop someday, then that's games lost forever.

Oh well, I'll just have to figure out some kind of download management between all of my several 3DS's (Collecting, such a bad habit.). XD

@tanookisuit yeah, i just downloaded a 7GB patch for NBA. You will need an SD card just for patches and dlc.
@whodatninja Zelda is around 13GB. It doesn't take up much space by todays standards. If you want current AAA titles expect 30GB or more

EDIT
BTW you are all missing the fact that you will need an SDXC card, not just some random card.

32? No it's not enough, but at least it's more convenient to expand than Wii U was.

@Rect_Pola Was it? For Wii U, you could plug in a 2TB External HDD.....

I know prices will go down and the size of cards will grow, but this isn't good enough. Even the currently larger sized cards are not big enough for modern games. The average PS4 game is around 40gb. Skyrim on PS4 is around 20gb. So even if we all go out and buy 256gb cards, that means we'll only be able to download about 12 games if they're all around 20gb. FIFA is around 40gb. If they're around that size, we'll be able to put about 6 games on our $100+ cards.

?!
32GB?
What is this, 2006?
Do they not know how much flash memory has evolved?
I would've expected 500GB or at least 250GB internal flash memory!

So what will happen to those multi platform games with 12--15 GB day one patches? Not even 64 gb, for a 300 dollars console? Mmmmm I definetly need to wait.. my hype level went from 100% to 5%...

Should have included 500gb internal. Zelda alone will eat up half the 32 gb storage, so this system only has room for 2 nintendo games, and maybe no AAA third party games. This automatically rules out most 3rd party support. For someone like me who buys all digital, this is insufficient. I know I can and will buy micro sd cards, but it should have come with more internal if they expect it to be taken seriously.

Terrible!

@Alpha989 you forget its portable and can take anywhere. Usually this cost more than stationary systems. I feel 32 gb is small but sdxc up to 128 gb will help. hopefully the 32gb is just internal. Hoping with an update they maybe expand that sdxc card storage from 128gb to 2 tb when the cost of it come down.

@SuperWeird So you have to remember the console is the just the screen. 500 gb are cheap but they wanted faster loading which you will get with flash memory.

@FreakFerrett cause of the storage your hype went down. Come on man. look your hype shouldnt have been that high in the first place.

@dkxcalibur you have to remember they do have physical media. You don't have to buy it digitally.

Yes, because my Wii U ran out of storage inmediatly and I know that it will be a big wall for third parties to port the games over as they like to ship 70% of the game nowadays, 10% in fixes on the day one and the rest on dlc.. so where is that going o go on the Switch.. are we really going to get third party support or it will be mostly 3ds devs who know that the switch is going to be the next 3ds.. so yes, for a $300 console in 2017 i expected a bit more of storage, for me thats a big deal, battery life not so much as i play mostly at home..but unless we get a price drop so i can get a 256 sd card I dont plan on getting the console.. I will play zelda on my Wii U...nothing else that they showed interests me so far.. the launch line up is a joke.. so yeah.. my hype went down, does that mean I wont get the console? nooo , I still believe its amazing, but not for that price and not for those games...

@SuperWeird you will pay full price for the game plus the storage, its sad.. i dont buy digital but the updates will eat all that memory in a blink of an eye..

Flash memory is pretty cheap, why didn't they just pust a couple of 64gb modules inside the switch. I wonder how much of the 32gb will be available after the OS and updates etc. Its the only area of the console that disapoints me.

Can anyone tell me if this card will work.? https://usadiscountwarehouse.com/shop/512gb-micro-sd-free-shipping-free-usb-adapter/?gclid=CjwKEAiA2OzDBRCdqIyIqYaaqQoSJABeJZdiTBRtvpx27Ks9ltazQnw4gZ3OAvt1ZCt523D9TF1YChoCXkDw_wcB

Nintendo still thinks that after playing a game we immediately erase it. That way we have enough space for our games. Nintendo really can't imagine that some of us want to keep those games.

That's why there's still no proper account-system. It won't happen.

@TwitchyNMast1028
Whilst the Switch will support any microSD card size, I would advise looking into cards by Sandisk or Samsung. They both currently have 256GB cards (the price is higher, but your data is protected more).

I heard sdxc cards can hold up to 2TB, that is great!

@moultonlava True statement, but I DL games. I'm at a stage in my life where I don't need more physical stuff. I used to trade in my games but don't anymore; and I'm not a collector either. Sometimes it's nice having all your games on the system, ready to rock & roll!

So did they confirm whether it comes with a micro sd card like the New 3DS did? Or do we have to buy one separately?