There's nothing run-of-the-mill about getting a demanding open world game built to PS4 spec up and running on the Switch. This is a huge undertaking, by far the most ambitious conversion to the Switch to date. Yeah, building it all again with custom art would've been cool, but also crazy expensive, perhaps so much so as to not be financially viable.

It is a new game for Nintendo fans. And a 16GB cart is more expensive than a 50GB blu-ray disc. This game use 32GB cart 

Unfortunatelly, it is indeed run-of-the-mill downport, there's nothing in it that even suggests anything other than scalling back almost everything possible, just like in other previously lauded ports. As I previously said few times, fiddling with ini files alone (which I've done quite a bit) will gave you fairly good idea what you can do with TW3 to make it run on low specs.

As for art - they already have all the art, eveything is set in place in that world...all they would need to do is reshape it to something like in those reworked screenshots or to something different, maybe Borlderlands style, whichever...and in this day and age when mods with better qualitty assets than vanilla versions are popping all over the place for free and in world where you can find quite good artist for more than very reasonable prices, no, I don't think it would be very expensive.

But since they don't need to do it, as shown by success of other muddy and blurry Switch downports, it comes down to better ROI vs something that stands out...and they've made a choice...shitty from perspective of what this port could've been, but sound business choice.

Memory prices have crashed down so much lately that I expect the price difference between a Blu-ray disc and a 16GB cartridge to be negligible by now, and the 32GB cartridge not much more expensive anymore. In fact, if the prices keep dropping as much as they did the last 2 years, then by 2022-2023 50GB Blu-ray discs will have to compete in price with 64GB cartridges. And this will probably be the point at which optical drives will go the way of the Dodo, safe for consoles, possibly movies/TV shows and some special uses, like archiving.

There's nothing run-of-the-mill about getting a demanding open world game built to PS4 spec up and running on the Switch. This is a huge undertaking, by far the most ambitious conversion to the Switch to date. Yeah, building it all again with custom art would've been cool, but also crazy expensive, perhaps so much so as to not be financially viable.

Unfortunatelly, it is indeed run-of-the-mill downport, there's nothing in it that even suggests anything other than scalling back almost everything possible, just like in other previously lauded ports. As I previously said few times, fiddling with ini files alone (which I've done quite a bit) will gave you fairly good idea what you can do with TW3 to make it run on low specs.

As for art - they already have all the art, eveything is set in place in that world...all they would need to do is reshape it to something like in those reworked screenshots or to something different, maybe Borlderlands style, whichever...and in this day and age when mods with better qualitty assets than vanilla versions are popping all over the place for free and in world where you can find quite good artist for more than very reasonable prices, no, I don't think it would be very expensive.

But since they don't need to do it, as shown by success of other muddy and blurry Switch downports, it comes down to better ROI vs something that stands out...and they've made a choice...shitty from perspective of what this port could've been, but sound business choice.

It's not as simple as just turning down settings. If it was that easy they'd get one guy to do it in an afternoon instead of having to contract a whole separate studio to work on it.

If that's the case, many AAA games from 3rd parties for Switch such as Bethesda games should use 32GB cart instead 16GB cart + download, right? "2022-2023 50GB Blu-ray discs will have to compete in price with 64GB cartridges" That is a possibility, but still is an unknown future. Unlike you, I can't be certain about it so at the moment, i will just wait and see

Also, https://www.svg.com/143568/cartridges-are-keeping-nintendo-switch-games-pricey/

It also said: "Compared to discs, Nintendo Switch cartridges are not easy to produce in mass quantities. On one hand, a Switch cartridge is flash storage, not unlike an SD card. On the other, Switch cartridges have a unique shape and size. Discs — whether they're CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Rays — pretty much take on the same form. The Nintendo Switch cartridge format, however, is a unique beast. If a Switch cartridge looked like an SD card, Nintendo could take advantage of the countless manufacturing facilities pumping those cards out. But it's not. So Nintendo must work with partners to create this very special type of flash storage card, and that makes the process more expensive.

It's the downside of choosing a proprietary storage format. And it's why you sometimes see new Switch games that cost $10+ more than their Xbox One and PlayStation 4 counterparts.

The cost of a Switch cartridge becomes an even bigger factor when you consider the size of different games. According to Eurogamer, Nintendo Switch cartridges come in 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB flavors. The smaller-capacity cartridges don't cost as much as the larger ones, which works out for tinier games. Then again, those games are often indie titles that opt for an eShop-only release, negating the cartridge entirely."

So both data size and the production of cart played a part in this matter.

It's a very poor article that lacks objectivity. Instead it runs with the usual "games are more expensive and it's all Nintendo's fault" story. Something that the Eurogamer article they cite is also guilty of.

If objectivity was applied, such an article would cite examples where third parties applied price hikes with no justifiable reason whatsoever, but such examples are conveniently omitted to put the blame solely on Nintendo. It's a display of lacking critical thinking, so yet another example why gaming journalism isn't proper journalism, because it opts to more or less copy-paste faulty reasoning that was posted by other gaming websites before.

If pressing cards of a different physical size than the norm would be expensive, then that should have hampered DS game prices and especially 3DS game prices too (3DS cards come in an odd form that makes them impossible to insert in a DS console). Similarly, GameCube games should have been more expensive because the console didn't use the DVD format, but GC games didn't cost more than PS2 and Xbox games.

The kind of nonsensical reasoning in relation to Switch game cards stems from the fact that gaming websites do not want to accept the line of thinking that in most cases it could be as simple as third parties trying to screw over gamers. Those same third parties who try every trick in the books to nickel and dime gamers across all platforms are suddenly saints when the topic is about a Nintendo console.