The Nintendo Switchs biggest failure is a massive opportunity for the future

Date:
Mon, 18 Jul 2022 13:18:00 +0000

Description:
Nintendo makes amazing consoles, but its notably lagging behind the competition when it comes to storage.

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I love the Switch, to the point where I can forgive many of its shortcomings. Sure, it cant do 4K. It often cant muster a stable performance. Its inundated with terrible ports. Oh, and the online infrastructure could be much, much better.

All things worthy of criticism. But theyve never been outright deal breakers for me. After all, if I let higher frame rates and resolutions dictate my purchasing habits, Id be missing out on many of the best Nintendo Switch
games around. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and the recently released Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, to name just a few.

But theres one thing that seriously irks me about the Nintendo Switch . Not just the base console, but also the Nintendo Switch OLED . And thats the downright paltry amount of storage space something the company will need to address for its future hardware endeavors. Giga-blight (Image credit: Shutterstock/Proxima Studio)

The Switch might be an epochal improvement over the Wii U , but it seems like Nintendo wasnt too interested in addressing one of that systems many flaws. The basic, white variant of the Wii U came with a measly 8GB of storage. Only if you were willing to pay more for the Deluxe pack would you get a shiny black console with 32 GB of storage.

Thats actually where we stand with the base Switch model, too. The handheld hybrid launched in 2017 with just 32GB of storage space. And in 2021, we got the Nintendo Switch OLED, which doubled that number to 64GB. But in the grand scheme of things, thats still far below what the competition is offering.

On PS5 , youre getting 1TB on both the physical and digital versions. Its a similar story with Microsoft: 1TB on Xbox Series X , and 512GB on Xbox Series S . These can be further bolstered by internal SSDs on PS5, and accessories like the Seagate Storage Expansion Card on Xbox.

The latter approach does apply to Switch as well. You can buy extra microSD cards to give your consoles storage a much-needed bump. The difference is
that the purchase of a microSD card for Switch can feel non-negotiable, especially if you download a lot of games. Its easy to fill out that meager amount of storage much quicker than youd like. Switch it up (Image credit: Nintendo)

So what can Nintendo do to address this issue in future and should it, given that the price of their consoles would likely rise as a result? I think the answer is a resounding yes here. Nintendo Switch games especially first
party titles and many of the third party ports have only gotten bigger in size in recent years.

Take Xenoblade Chronicles 3 , launching at the end of July. At 15GB, its the largest mainline Xenoblade game to date. And on a base Switch without a microSD card installed, it will eat up just under half of the total storage space available. The equivalent on PS5 would be a game taking up roughly 400 to 500GB of space. Not even storage-hungry games like Call of Duty: Warzone
or Horizon Forbidden West can claim to achieve that.

Moreover, Nintendos first party output is only going to get more ambitious with time. We already know that Monolith Soft is working on a gigantic new
IP. Similarly, future Zelda titles are likely to surpass even Breath of the Wild 2 in terms of boundary-pushing scope.

Nintendo absolutely needs to bring its A game when it comes to storage space on its future consoles, then. And I dont just mean a modest bump up to something like 128GB. When even smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S22 can offer up to 256GB of storage space, Nintendo has no excuse not to bolster its tech.

At the bare minimum, Id love to see Nintendos next flagship console clock in at least 256GB of storage space. But 512GB or even 1TB would be a real win. Hopefully, an upgrade like that would be matched by other much-requested
specs like 4K resolution and support for higher frame rates. Many of us now treat the Switch like an Xbox or PlayStation on the go, and Nintendo needs to do the same.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/the-nintendo-switchs-biggest-failure-is-a-massi ve-opportunity-for-the-future/


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