It's pretty obvious that they are cheaping out on the capacity of the game card, like so many other AAA publishers. Mentioning textures and better gameplay is supposed to trick gullible people into believing that something beneficial is being done, but after The Witcher 3 gamers should be smarter than that and see through it right away.

From the spound of things, it is the same as Witcher 3.  Full game on card, playable out of the box.  The day 1 patch, which the Witcher had as well, is just bug fixes and improvements.

It is a day 1 patch, not a required partial install.

You continue to baffle me, curl. When Nintendo announced that the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 expansion would be released as a standalone physical game, we went through months of you doubting that the game will be on a card, right up to its release and an unboxing of it being posted on Twitter/Youtube. But here we have a third party game and you give it the benefit of the doubt despite its actual announcement.

https://outerworlds.obsidian.net/en/news/outerworlds/the-outer-worlds-to-launch-on-nintendo-switch-on-june-5-2020

As we prepare for another arrival of new colonists, we have some very important information for those making this journey, specifically for you colonists who prefer your goods in physical form: The retail version The Outer Worlds comes on a physical cartridge, and it will be accompanied by a day one patch that could be up to 6 GB. This patch will optimize gameplay, provide additional hi-res textures, and include other fixes to provide the employees of Halcyon with the best gameplay experience. Please ensure you have planned accordingly and have available space necessary for the patch.

For some perspective, the digital-only GRID Autosport offers a separate additional download on the eShop that contains exclusively high-res textures to improve the visuals in TV mode. That's an example where you can say it's not necessary to download a free patch, but The Outer Worlds makes it explicitly clear that it's not just high-res textures, so it's no surprise that its patch will come in at about twice the size as GRID's high-res textures download.

Not necessarily. If it is indeed a performance patch and hi res texture pack the game should be playable without it.

There's nothing so far to indicate that the game isn't playable without the day one patch though, so given the information we have so far it's not accurate to say that only half the game's on the card. 

Not required.....You could eat an uncooked hotdog right out of the package too. Maybe even without chewing...The patch is close to mandatory. Unless the bombs drop, playing it in it's cart-only state looks like an unreasonable compromise. Even now, during a semi-apocalypse.

Obsidian explicitly tells people to plan accordingly for the patch to have enough free space available, does that sound completely optional to you?

And again the XC2 expansion example, nothing ever indicated that its physical release will not be on a game card. You simply took the absence of it being spelled out that physical means game card and ran with it based on the precedent of third parties, not Nintendo, being dishonest about the definition of a physical Switch release. It's such a tremendous double standard, curl.

The point I was making is if the game is already out on other systems, then clearly whatever this day one patch is could be incorporated into the cart especially if it is coming out in June. Hence my statement great half a game as half the size is downloable.