Nintendo quarterly sales report: Switch 2 at 5.82m, Switch 1 hits 153.1m

[RolStoppable]

Biggerboat1 said:

Soundwave said:

Thing is it would probably be more than that. 

The cost to developers that's been out there is $16 for a 64GB cartridge. So if you're talking about a game like FC Soccer 26 on Switch 2 as an example which is $69.99 on the Switch 2 (PS5/XBS also) ... you'd be looking at $86 for the "all-in" cartridge version and you'd still have to download data to the internal storage, so technically the full game is not even on the cartridge. You really want to be paying $86 as the standardized price? 

For 128GB, if that even comes out, you're probably looking at $20+ more (so $90-$95+ a game). You can probably begin to understand very quickly why Nintendo did not want to do that. 

And at the end of the day ... you'd be getting the worst experience playing off the cartridge itself because the cartridges are significantly slower than the Switch 2's internal storage and even SD Express cards so you have worse loading times to boot. Really who wants to be paying $86-$90+ to play a Switch 2 game with the worst possible load times? 

Switch 1 carts were a fairly slow 90MB/sec, I've seen numbers stating Switch 2 carts are 450MB/sec ... which is a healthy uptick, until you realize the internal storage is up to 1200MB/sec and SD Express cards can be 900MB-1000MB/sec. 

I get nostalgia and this and that, but at some point this becomes silly and stupid, you're paying out the ass to get the worst format experience. 

I love it how on one thread you're hand-waving away the sacrifices in performance in a game like Star Wars Outlaws on S2 vs the PS5/XB Series, then here are selling moderately increased load times as some meaningfully worse gaming experience. 

It's so patently obvious that you start with a conclusion of 'Nintendo is correct' and work back from there in almost any scenario.

It's extremely cringe.

A similar contradiction arises when he pretends to be oblivious to data compression - as Switch 1 versions have already proved, 40 GB games could be put in full on 16 GB game cards - and talks about wanting no compromises for third parties in texture quality and the like, but then you remember how big of a proponent he has been for DLSS for years, suggesting that even native rendering at resolutions as low as 480p would be good enough on the Switch successor.

Where I disagree with you is that he doesn't start with a conclusion of "Nintendo is correct" because he starts with a conclusion of "Soundwave is correct." In this case it's about "physical games should die" which he has argued since before Switch 2's launch, including the suggestion that Nintendo would have been smart to scrap a slot for a physical medium altogether.

...

On a related note as far as margins on software are concerned, Nintendo's MSRP for physical Switch 2 games is €10 higher than for their digital counterparts here in Europe. Last week I was shopping at a Mediamarkt (one of the largest retailer chains) in Austria and they are selling both Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza €10 below MSRP, making the prices equal to the digital versions of these games. Looks like both Nintendo and retailers have high enough margins regardless. But this was clear from the beginning: Physical games didn't have a higher MSRP because of game card production costs, but because Nintendo wanted their eShop to be more competitive with physical pricing to push more people towards digital. Only two months in, the price advantage of digital is already gone. Now it's the same price for physical and digital, so these are the options for gamers:

1. Get game ownership and save storage space on your Switch 2's internal memory/micro SD express card.
2. Forego game ownership and make a notable step towards spending money on additional memory for your system. Especially if you are like Soundwave and aim for 100+ GB games all the time.