Predict the price for Switch 2

[Bofferbrauer2]

Soundwave said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Or they could simply get a M.2 SSD if they want higher speeds. A small 256GB M.2 2242 costs just below 20€, 25€ for the even smaller 2230 format. Also, they both come with 2000MB/s second read and ~1000MB/s write. For 30€ you're already able to get a 480GB SSD, so why not go this route for extendable storage?

Also sure, Android Phones have the capability for UFS 3.x - but their chips can't keep up with that, as evidenced whenever you're getting some lengthy loading screens. UFS speeds are highly hypothetical and just like SSDs need multiple chips to achieve their full potential. 256GB SLC would be the absolute minimum fur UFS3.x to even make a difference over past standards - but at the same time, you can get cheaper 500GB MLC with similar speeds. In other words, going UFS 3.x and less than 500GB would be a waste of UFS. At that point, I don't think Nintendo would create another storage tier anymore.

Even UFS 2.2 is going to be considerably faster than the eMMC 5.1 the Switch 1 uses now and way faster than an SD Card though. Android phones have a lot of bloatware too and Switch 2 probably will also have LPDDR5 RAM (pretty fast) which will help utilize that hypothetical UFS speed better, not all Android phones have that.

Would I like M.2 SSD and all that jazz ... sure, but I think it would make the system too expensive and/or take money away that could spent on the chipset/RAM, which I think are more important. 

I think UFS is probably the best compromise. It's cheap and widely available and faster than the current Switch or SD Cards. eMMC is too slow for a system that's going to have a large increase in system RAM and larger game file sizes, SD Card is even worse.

If games like Zelda: ToTK already have like load/wait times of 47 seconds to get into a game, I mean you're going to be seeing 1+ minute waits on Switch 2 without a change, which is kind of hilarious for a company that basically handed over the stationary home console market to Sony because they were that adverse to like 10 seconds of loading back in the day. 

The problem with UFS is that whenever something is stored on something else than the internal flash memory, it would absolutely tank the performance like in your example, hence my M.2 suggestion for external memory to be able to keep up with the internal memory. Having too big a disparity between internal and external speeds would be a nightmare for load times and especially texture streaming and result in the same issue we have since PS360: They needed to install games first to make up for the loss of speed, but in the Switch's case it would pretty much mean that the internal memory could not be extended (just like on most phones these days too btw).

I agree that most SD cards are too slow and that UFS could be a good match for the internal memory. But we'd need to have an external memory that can match those speeds to not fall behind too much and cause problems.

I couldn't find any UFS cards on Amazon despite the standard being from 2016, neither could I find any CFExpress cards or SD Express cards, which achieve similar speeds (2019 and 2018 respectively), and UHS-II SD cards are both too slow and prohibitively expensive. Edit: I could find CFExpress cards on a german PC retailer site, but that memory is also prohibitively expensive compared to using M.2 sticks.

As such, the only real options are either the slow SD cards, the fast but more expensive to implement M.2 sticks or Nintendo coming with a propietary standard, which looking back at previous consoles is generally a pretty bad idea.