Capcom has a long history of anti-consumer practices. This is just another one. I am not buying it.

8GB cart is equal in cost to a Ps4 disk, so there's a certain amount of logic to what he's saying.

It would prevent publishers from uneccessarily cheaping out like this, while putting no additional strain on anyone. With the prices of the carts coming down the minimal capacity could rise steadily. Sure, it's an absolute waste of resources, but seeing that big publishers obviously can't be trusted to make rational decisions anymore, it's not the worst option.

I don't think it's feasable anyways to do it with a firmware update,  since it would likely break compatibility with existing games, but Nintendo could simply cease to offer carts that are cheaper than disks.

Actually one of the manufacturers of nintendos carts (it's the same manufactuer that also make the 3DS carts) released a statement that they expected to be able to produce 32GB carts at the price of BDs shortly, before the Switch launched. I've always assumed the NAND price hike got in the way of that happening according to their roadmap.

But if I had to guess, 16GB is probably only slightly more expensive then PS4 disks. Definetly nowhere near the 10$ precehike we've been seeing. It's just a nice round numer and an easy excuse to pricehike.

Limited Run Games has also talked about the expense of carts over a certain capacity if I remember correctly.

The only thing that that proves is cards are more expensive than disc's

go online you can easily find places where you can get blu-rays with content pressed for under a dollar, you can't even buy blank cards for that price

Yes disc's are obviously to large for a Switch to fit in it so unless you have sort of mini disc they're a no go, but you can not argue cards are cheaper than disc

http://www.quickturnduplication.com/html/blu-ray-duplication-prices.php

Here you see @ 10,000 copies BR 25GB are 75 cents per disc

Can anyone find the cheapest blank card?

Here is an Ars-Technica article that I was referring to (well, actually I was thinking of a diffrent article about the same sales report, but this is the one I found) making reference to Macronix selling 32GB ROMs to Nintendo at BD price.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/why-nintendo-nxs-rumored-shift-from-discs-to-cartridges-is-actually-smart/

Macronix has manufactured the chips for Nintendos carts since the DS. It is unlikely much more cosz is added with the plastic shell, because higher capacity Switch carts don't have a pcb (probably to save on ecactly those costs...) but have the pins directly on the chip itself.

I think due to NAND shortage they ended up selling the 32GB capacity at a slightly higher price. 16GB is likely at or extremely close to BD pricing, wich is why it's a commonly used cart size. Even with the competition for NAND on the market (wich, macronix is just getting into) it is highly unlikely that prices would have gone up so much that even 8GB carts are more expensive then BD now, let alone 4 GB.

Capcom is being cheap and anti-consumer is all.

You're miss reading the article, there they say "The biggest detail lacking in Screen Critics' report is any confirmation that Macronix's next fiscal year will include a ramping-up of 32GB-capacity chips—and selling such chips to Nintendo at a cost comparable to Blu-ray discs. "

'lacking' perhaps english isnt your native language bu they're not saying they're going to cost roughly similar to blu-ray. In fact the rest of the article says the ROMs are going to be more expensive than blu-ray, but they're speculating. I want actual data.

I did go online with alibaba, the cheapest place on the web to buy stuff, and the best deal I could find were blank ROM's at smaller capacity to a blu-ray costing 500% more, not 5% more 500% more. 500% more for less capacity and they're blank, The bluray is with the game written onto it.

I agree rom's are better for a portable device like the switch, but they're certainly not as cheap

Ah, yeah I read over that too quickly.

But I do remember distinctly that there were reports Macronix was ramping up 32GB ROM chips and expected to sell them at BD price. I think it was around the time they moved to 45nm process. I think there is a correct link about that somewhere on this forum, but I'm too lazy to dig through it, honestly...

Like I said, this wasn't the article I originally read. I think the whole reason they even phreased it like that is that Macronix HAD in fact announced the 32GB/BD price expectation earlier and then they neglected to metion it again. Leading to my speculation that the price rise in NAND flash probably prevented that from happening.

You really can't compare AliBaba pricing to company bulk order though. A 500% mark up for consumer sales (wich is what AliBaba boils down to) isn't even that much, you see much higher margins. I imagine you also didin't find a ROM chip order of 10.000 units to be comparable to your earlier BD offer.

It makes me sad to agree. I love so many of their franchises, but they've just let me down too many times in the past few years.

There are plenty of physical games on Switch that have gone on sale and yet come on larger cartridges (namely 8 GB). In addition, games that fit on 8 GB and smaller cartridges seem to be priced in line with their disc based counterparts. Moreover, 3DS has cartridges that range from 1-8 GB (Vita game carts are also within this range) and yet most games are cheaper on that system compared to those that come on disc. The problem currently seems to be with the 16 and 32 GB carts, which will most likely be resolved as more units are produced and bulk prices are lowered. But these larger carts are not the ones that Capcom has to use.

As for the hacking thing, both the Wii, 3DS, DS have had similar vulnerabilities to Switch that eventually led to piracy. None of these systems died from it (not to mention systems like PS4 also being hackable at the moment). As for the demographic information you provided about a large base of teens and kids without their own income, Nintendo has already shared demographic information indicating Switch's audience currently mostly consists of younger adults with their own income.

Finally, you are blaming Nintendo for going with cartridges. Again, as with my previous comment, what would you have them do? If they released a system with no physical media then people would have jumped on them like they did with MS with the Xbox One (which was initially supposed to have physical media tied to a digital ecosystem (or PSP GO). In addition, as previously mentioned discs are not viable anymore. A physical BD ROM would not fit inside the Switch and mini Disc standards have not been updated in years.

I brought up the Nintendo Life link earlier regarding the 8 GB cart being priced similarly to the BD counterpart. The primary argument against my link appears to be the cost of the BD discs versus the cost of cartridges. There are a few things wrong with looking at this situation by directly looking at the cost.

1. Neither Nintendo nor Sony are selling the physical media at the cost they are produced. If you read the article, they talk about how the developer is at that price also receiving packaging and other items for publishing. In addition, it is quite likely that both companies are making a certain amount of profit on every unit of physical media sold to publishers (much like how they make profit on the revenues of developers on their digital stores). Hence, Nintendo is simply pricing the 8GB cart package similarly to the BD package offered by Sony and MS.

2. The flash memory inside devices like Vita and Switch is not the same as things as SD Cards. So looking at bulk prices of SD Cards  on sites like Alibaba is not a good indicator. The flash memory on used on these cartridges is designed for a much smaller number writes compared that what is in SD cards, and hence these cards should be much cheaper to produce. Although, with that being it is probably correct that looking just at cost, disks cost less than carts. Hence, why Sony and MS offer fewer SKUs for publishers for physical media on disk based consoles.

3. Both 3DS and Vita had carts ranging from 1-8 GBs. In the case of the 3DS, the carts were much more sophisticated compared to what comes Switch and Vita (the 3DS carts had a seperate writable chip for saves as well as native interfaces that would allow for carts to expand hardware functionality). Despite this both 3DS and Vita games cost considerably less than the home console games despite using carts.

4. Currently I believe most of the Switch games that are simultaneously released at a higher price than their counterparts are the ones on the 16 GB and 32 GB carts. This is currently a problem that mass production can fix over time. Moreover, this does not apply to this game (which can fit on a 4 GB cart).

With regards to this specific situation with Capcom. The file sizes that OP lists indicate that the game would fit on a 4 GB Switch cart. Again bear in mind that there have been a few 3DS and many more Vita games that have launched on similar cart sizes and yet cost less than games launching on disc (on the Vita in particular, there have been games that cross launched on PS4 and yet the Vita version costed considerably less). 

My hypothesis based on what I presented above is that Capcom has seen that Switch has the option to split physical games into a portion that comes on disc and a downloadable portion. In addition, they see that Nintendo is offering even cheaper physical media packages in the form of 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB carts. Thus, by going with a smaller cart that contains only part of the game they can increase their profit margins. It is likely that Capcom is making more money on the Switch version by using the 1GB cart. This is not Capcom being evil, but rather a way to make more money. If Sony and MS offered a similar system to Switch, Capcom would have done a similar thing if Sony and MS offered cheaper disk packages that allowed part of the game to be downloaded.

This is not unlike what Konami did with the PC version of Metal Gear Solid V (although Capcom is not nearly as bad), where they opted to go with a DVD (as opposed to say a Blu-ray disc that could actually fit the game) that only contained an 8MB Steam installer with no trace of the game itself.