I'm sorry there are so many Nintendo Switch topics on this forum, I really am, but I didn't see one addressing what is to me a very important point. The Nintendo Switch has what many call "Low Storage Capacity" and in a sense you are right, compared to current gen consoles the storage capacity IS low. But now consider this, the current gen also has to copy games to the harddrive on the system in order to even play the game using a DISC, so there are often 50-60 gb games that are saved on our current gen consoles eating up space. The storage on the Switch is 32 gb, yes but it is not the typical storage that you get with an XBox One and a PS4.
The main and most important difference is the fact that the Switch uses cartridges for its games. This makes it possible to have save data store in small capacities right on the gamecard, but also makes it a very fast read/write system and it runs right from the cartridge itself. No writing elsewhere and reading from there, so the 50 gb games that may pop up (I don't know what the official capacity is on the game cards) will not need to be written on the system, that would be used for game updates, and maybe some save file stuff.
The problem with the 32 gb storage really arises for download only gamers, but again this is easily rectified with a micro SD card. Nobody really WANTS to have to buy separate storage and everyone thinks that it is cheesy to have a system release with insufficient storage, but I have had to purchase an external harddrive for my XBox One as well, so really it's the same idea. The nice thing is the storage is super fast-reading, even in the expandable form, much faster than a harddrive on an XBox One or PS4. Download only gamers will definitely need to expand, but it is not a huge price wall or anything to purchase a new SD card.
The next misunderstanding that I noticed is the paywall idea for online play. YES, Nintendo has been free for years for online play, but honestly this NEEDED to change. I love Nintendo, I love playing their games online, but let's be honest, their online systems currently SUCK. Like, they are some of the worst to play games on ever, like even worse than an original XBox online architecture and that stuff is OLD. Playing Smash online is terrible unless you're in 1v1s and it's really not sending all that much data, it's just their architecture is so slow and inept it ruins the whole experience. OK, back on track, they need to upgrade. It costs money to upgrade obviously, and this is part of the reason for their partnership with DeNa. They are going to help rebuild the online from the bottom up so that it is smooth and works well and I bet they will even get dedicated servers (yay!), at least that's the plan.
Nintendo needs to make up this money somehow, and they need money to maintain and update as time goes by as well. In order to afford and keep a sustainable business model they NEED to charge for this, plus they are adding extra value with a free monthly game or two as well. Also, we don't even know what the pricing model for online looks like, so I can't complain about it at all, to me it seems like a huge step in the right direction. We pay for XBox Live and Playstation Plus for the same reasons, there is no reason Nintendo should not be able to charge for their hard work and effort to clean up their online services.
I may add to this as I see more things crop up, but for now I just wanted to touch on these couple of things and say please stop whining, they are not only trying, they have a REAL plan in place this time around and personally I think they are going the right direction with all of it. I still can't wait to see what the actual OS looks like, and I don't think that presentation was quite everything, there is still a lot to look forward to.
NNID: Dongo8 XBL Gamertag: Dongos Revenge
