Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Could Have The Biggest File Size Of Any First-Party Switch Release

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Probably accounts for the price increase in the game needing a bigger sd card capacity

Switch tax folks....switch tax

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 32g cart version. That would be a first if true 32g version are finally making to hold bigger games rather then Day One download.

I find it funny how the biggest 1st party game's file size is still pretty small compared to most other games out there.

Well, that explains the price increase. Nintendo needed a bigger cart. Really hoping that proper dungeons are part of the reason for this large file size.

BoTW was a huge game so this being 4GB bigger can only mean good things. Could also be an indication of more voiced dialogue and more cutscenes.

How does the file size effect the price of a game? There's plenty of other switch games larger than that at a lower price such as LA Noire, Witcher 3, South Park, attack on titan 2 as some examples. Also for all we know the cartridge version could have 14GB of data on the cart and the rest is in an day one update added to the SD/system storage.

I’ll give Nintendo credit as they are probably the best when it comes to formatting and file compression. 18 GB is what it would take to load Pong on my XBox series X 😂…seriously in comparisons to your standard 50GB+ for the other consoles this is absolutely manageable. This game will be another epic.

@UltimateOtaku91 of the games you mentioned there only The Witcher 3 was on a 32gb cartridge. There was still a download of about 3gb. The next size cartridge down from there is 16gb. The L.A. Noire cartridge requires a 14gb download, much like NBA 2K releases.

@adh56 while true their digital price is lower.

I don’t think cartridge size is the reason for the price increase, that means nintendo has to pay more to nintendo, to use the 32gb cart.

Also BotW and Smash were €69,99 digitally from start here, while the physical games were €59,99. So I think this whole price increase has a different reason behind it.

@Rayquaza2510 I don’t think it’s the only reason but I believe it played a factor, as well as the fact that the other consoles are pricing their games at $70 (at least here in the US)

@Spider-Kev if you find BOTWs world empty, you werent exploring enough

Ten bucks says there’s a required download with the physical purchase.

If they just explained "why" its 10 dollar more than before.

4GB is a lot. Is only a good thing.

I saw this on twitter and checked my 512GB storage card and I only have 30GB left which could be a problem if I buy the vouchers to get TotK and Pikmin 4. Really don’t feel like messing around with a new card.

I wonder if Switch 2 will work with our Switch SD card? Or if Switch 2 will read Switch carts.
Decisions decisions.

That kind of makes sense. It's above 16 GB. So it needs the 32 GB cartridge.

Since I played mostly xbox and ps games last year, a 19gb game is potatoes compared to some other games I’ve played

@Savage_Joe

checks PS5 storage in settings menu

Gran Turismo 7: 117.2 GB

Yepp us Xbox Series and PS5 owners have crazy big games.

@Nikhogan Agreed. That empty world sure was packed with fun stuff to do and cool places to explore, was what I was thinking.

Was expecting something alot bigger than that lol

It’s so funny how small that is compared to other first party’s lol.

You really can't compare file sizes between consoles very much. Just for an example convenient for me to check, on Switch Danganronpa V3 is 7.8 GB while on Xbox it's 35.3 GB and it was out on the Switch first. Different visual presentation and different compression will make for wildly different results.

Interesting. That would mean it has to go on the 32g cartridge.

@Lizuka
Technically you can, if you compare it by ratio.

Now if only the switch can handle atleast 2% needed to run.

@Rayquaza2510 yeah the reason is bending us over and giving us the high hard one. Nintendo is a scummy scummy company when it comes to their fans and gamers. They attack anyone who loves their IPs. They dont care what the fans want or think, ever. And they overcharge for everything. Yet why do I love them? Lol, because the games are amazing. But adding $50 to the price of the oled switch when prices usually go down is greedy. Charging a ton for the crappy expansion pack that is 1/16th of the deal that Microsoft and Sony offer. I gotta get a Steamdeck, lol.

I thought Smash Ultimate was bigger? Must be misremembering I guess.

The thing I hate most about the switch is no 3rd party support (from anyone other than indie devs). I'm playing Dying Light and loving it on my Switch (it's my only console). The Witcher 3 is another great one. I love single player narrative games and the switch sadly has few unless you want a JRPG. AMD what happened to the cloud version of dying light 2? Aren't we at a year since the delay?

@P-Man base Smash Ultimate wasn’t that big.

1) preordered digital version
2) likely largest effort game produced by Nintendo for Switch
3) just in GB from 18th century to today the inflation value is over 22 000%. I bet people from that period would be almost as loud as some people here about the price increase of the game
4) I’m extremely (and positively) surprised that there are no (digital) editions of the game. I always expected to see at least 3 (digital) editions same like it’s usual with AAA games on PC with different pricing.
5) I’m extremely pleased preordering doesn’t unlock any special items (at least I didn’t notice anything of the sort) in the game as is usual with many PC titles which very often annoys me very much.

@5th313ment There are plenty of 3rd party games on Switch that isn’t indies. They are just overshadowed compared to the sheer 1st party library that the Switch offers.

Non indie 3rd parties are like 30% of my library. The issue is people go “it doesn’t count” if it’s not some FFVII Remake AAA level third party or a port or not an exclusive 3rd party game gracing the system.

The $70 price tag is therefore easier to digest if it’s all on the cart as it would not fit on a 16GB cart. If however there’s a day one download of 2GB or more and they’re using a 16GB cart then imo it’s a cash grab

I don't care what anyone says, I'd be HAPPY to pay $100 for this Masterpiece! And buy a 1TB SanDisk Micro SD Card, like I Have, it's totally worth it!

@Arawn93 I think might have been thinking of the game with all of its DLC.

@5th313ment I agree, but then again a majority of those 3rd party games, like madden, call of duty, etc. Are pretty boring to me. It would be nice for people who only have a Nintendo Switch, like myself now since I gave my cousin my Series S.

IIRC Breath of the Wild was ~13.5GB at launch but saw its file size increase a bit over time after some updates.

Tears of the Kingdom will be a ~20GB game when all said and done.

18GBs is big? Maybe back in 2005. I've been playing my Steam Deck, and some games are 100GBs. I WISH devs would put in the effort to make game file sizes as compact as Nintendo seems to be.

It makes me laugh that people try to find excuses for the price increase. No need to defend Nintendo here. It’s just because they know people will buy it regardless of the price. So they want to get the most out of it. But they’ll blame it on covid and other silly reasons.

Is that big? Bayonetta 1 is like that much to I think I do not remember. 16GB or something. Playstation games are much more than 100GB that is true.

Btw.. botw totk amiibo still in stock at bestbuy

DLC is gonna make that even heftier. Time to start clearing space on my card. my second TB is almost full and I'm trying not to delete games.

@5th313ment
" They dont care what the fans want or think, ever. And they overcharge for everything. ......Charging a ton for the crappy expansion pack that is 1/16th of the deal that Microsoft and Sony offer."

aha...
You mean the Nintendo that resurrected IPs (Sin & Punishment , Fatal Frame etc) of super-niche games, co-financed the complete development circle and even published them, willfully knowing that they could never possibly make a dime?

The Nintendo that re(!)introduced slowdown with an update in Starfox 64 on the Wii Virtual Console because "some fans wrote them it doesn't feel like the N64 one"?

and what is a "crappy expansion pack"?
If you mean the Online Expansion pack I don't agree with you.
I pay a whoopin 3.3(!) euros a month for ~80 NES-, over 60 SNES-, 18 N64-, 11 GBA-, 9 GB- and 30ish Mega Drive games; a quadzillion of new Mario Kart 8 tracks/characters, Animal Crossing Happy Home Paradise and the complete Splatoon 2 Octo expansion pack.
Alone the NES and SNES games offer hundrets of hours of gameplay and include some of the best RPGs, Act-Advs and Jump'n Runs ever made.
Plus you can play them anywhere you want.
for hardly 3.5 euros a month.
Sorry but I can't see the "crappy" or "expensive" in this offering.

18 GB, but that is 18 GB with Nintendo's compression skills. That tells a lot.

@Savage_Joe it'll still be a pain to download with that ancient 100Mbit connection limit (not even thinking about wifi lol)

Huh, I never thought of Xenoblade Chronicles as Nintendo first party titles. But I guess they are since Nintendo is the publisher and these games are Nintendo exclusives. They are not developed by Nintendo though. However Monolith Soft is pretty much only developing for Nintendo these days.

Xenogears and Xenosaga had their home on Playstation and Playstation 2. The franchise was created by SquareSoft.

This is absolutely impractical as a digital download.

@DaniPooo Nintendo acquired Monolith Soft back in 2007, and Nintendo don't make games for any other platform than their own, so they're absolutely exclusive.

@DaniPooo Monolith Soft is a first party studio. It's part of Nintendo.

@datamonkey @Ade117 No, BOTW was €70 in Europe, and so is this game. Their other games are €60. The price hike for Zelda isn't new in Europe, they already did it with BOTW.

@Octane

As far as I know Zelda games are often more expensive than other games, here in Europe. However, I think I did pay only 50+ Euro's on botw (Wii u version), 60 at the most. I pre-ordered Tears of the kingdom at 60 Euro's. I did pay 60 Euro for Twilight princess (gamecube version), but that was in a physical shop (so I probably did pay to much). Zelda games are massive games, so a little increase isn't that bad.

This site shouldn't make such a hoopla about the price and nor should the fans. Just don't get it from the e-shop and not from any physical shops. I am pretty sure that America also has online-shops where you can get it at a good price!

Size doesn’t matter.. unless it’s too small.. that would make it boring

@Henmii Physical yes, they are often around €10 cheaper (at least in EU). But the digital price for BOTW was €70 on Switch. Maybe it was 60 on Wii U, I don't remember.

@iLikeUrAttitude I’m not the most technical person when it comes to coding and the like but I always take Nintendo’s hilariously small game sizes as an indication of their expertise. Metroid Prime Remastered is 8gb. NBA2K22 is 52gb.

Does anyone honestly believe the price is $70 because it's 4 gigs bigger? Really? It's $70 because Nintendo knows they can get away with it. Pure and simple.

@tofuman86 my internet is 50mbps 😂😂😂 and I managed to download 100gb of Halo Master Chief Collection overnight

@UltimateOtaku91 XCOM was 22GB and I bought it for $5. Anyone saying the file size justifies the price increase is on something

@iLikeUrAttitude yeah like the 360 era had games just as big and sometimes take hours to download. just goes to show how much this tech has improved over just a short amount of time.

@Korgon yup, love how their statement on why its $70 was essentially just "because we can". didnt even bother to give us specifics.

@arabiansanchez yeah and even from devs outside of the switch, doom eternal is 80 gb on the ps4 and they brought it down to just 18.8 for the switch port. its damn impressive how they do this kind of stuff with hardware equal to a xbox 360

@Selim for the switch 18 gb is freaking massive. most games dont take up much more than 5 gb. all the splatoon games combined don't even come close only adding up to around 8 gb.

Kay then. I'll hafta see more of it before I decide.

@The-Chosen-one It's $10 more because people are going to happily pay the extra $10. Simple.

and then the inevitable patches, dlc, other cranks it up to around 25.

For the Switch though that's really good so nice. So long as it's not also bland, but it looks active so should be good.

Maybe I will pre order afterall, idk. I think I'll wait at least a month or two though. Haven't decided if I will or won't pre prder yet. I'm getting Kirby though.

TOTK will have caves as well as an entire sky realm to explore, so no wonder it has 4GB more.

People are seriously underrating the potential TOTK has to redefine a new standard for open world exploration, combining seamless sky traversal with land, all the way down to cavernous tunnels underground.

i wonder why Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom file size is so huge?18.3GB to Breath of the Wild 14.4GB is a massive increase, i hope the game have a lot of content to warrenty this expensive price and massive file size, my Nintendo Switch that is currenty at 18.1GB, will be down to 3GB when i buy the physical media of the game.

@Ulysses sky, undeground and maybe underwater exploration made Nintendo charge $70 for the game?

@Octane

I agree. If you really want the game digital you are screwed. Maybe if you have luck there's a online-shop that has a cheaper download-code for the game. Sometimes that happens.

Maybe the extra $10 is for a bigger game card with enough storage to ensure I won't have to download anything? That better be the case.

Looks like that extra $10 is going to a 32GB cart. At least if you’re buying physical. Not sure what the justification is for digital purchases.

Yeah, the cartridge has more space than normally would be my bet.

I think it'd be cool if Nintendo somehow made it where updates for physical games updated the actual game card and not take up space on the internal memory. Not for the Switch but possibly Switch 2.

Isn't that larger than the largest available Switch cartridge? Does that mean people with physical will need to download part of the game before it can be played?

@5th313ment square-enix supports the switch

kids, don't fool yourselves this has anything to do with file size when it comes to this $70 price tag. It's called GREED!! Nintendo fans would pay $100 for the base game. Nintendo knows they can easily get away with this and Zelda is the best game to pull this crap on us!! Can you imagine if they ever get to 4K games?? $90-100+ a game!! This is where I put my foot down, $59 games already suck!!

For those not in the USA, the $10 more isn't just $10 more.
It's $60 + Tax at 9% on the $60
So now it is $70 + 9% on the $70
That brings it closer to $90 for us in the US
9% isn't equal across the country either.
The town I lived in most recently has Federal sales tax, State Sales Tax, City Sales tax which brings it to 18.25% sales tax.
It's not even a real city!
It's a small town run by super corrupt city council.

If the extra $10 were going to pay for a bigger card, then there's no justification for making the digital version $70. Just pure greed at that point.

The hype is unreal for this game (definitely deserves it as I can't wait). Having said that, people will pay $70 so that's why they are charging $70. I do hope this does not become a trend though.

@Spider-Kev you need to move to a red state pronto...

@Danrenfroe2016
I actually am.
I'm in Missouri.
Just that the town is run by Blue.
The town I'm in now has like zero tax.
But there's nothing here.
I prefer it!
In the mountains on a lake.

18GB? You kids never had it so good * cries in Elden Ring install size *

I only buy download for Switch but may buy the cart for this one as Link's girth may break my console...

If cost increase is due to cart size then it should be $10 cheaper if you download instead.

@Liam_Doolan The file size has been decreased to 15.9GB on the game's eShop listing.