CP2077 is $70, full on cart...and it pretty much requires SSD for streaming assets.

400MB/s is slower than what PC SATA SSDs (which is minimum requirement) read at (between 500-560MB/s), but not that much slower - as I said, would love to see DF do the tests.

I think it's really funny how some users here try desperately to act as if cartridges are dead or bad. Game cards are the thing that sets the Switch apart and people are upset because they want physical games. People are ready to pay a premium for a physical game. To each their own. I will gladly pay more to have a game on card. The Switch 2's biggest problem right now is that there is less physical media available compared to Switch 1 and that hurts software sales for third parties. Otherwise Nintendo wouldn't do public surveys about Game Key Cards lol.

As for the actual topic of this thread: I'm really happy with the Switch 2's performance so far. Low-effort ports are basically PS4 versions with faster loading times, which is perfectly fine and what I expected. Higher effort ports are comparable to PS4 Pro and it looks like with the right game or the right optimization performance can land somewhere between PS4 Pro and Series S. This is all I could've asked for and I'm really happy with it. Also, the list of big games coming to the system is pretty large already. I prefer playing on handhelds or hybrids (even though I play a lot in docked mode, too) and my wishlist is already way too long. There's definitely more high profile third party games for the system than there was on the Switch 1. And Nintendo still provides their steady stream of one first party game per month, which is awesome. I just want more games on actual cards instead of Game Key Cards, and I don't mind paying more for that (in Europe first party games on card already cost 10€ more than downloads and that doesn't stop people from buying physical games at all)

A Switch 2 game has to sell at $15 dollars more to make the same amount of money as the PS5/Xbox version per physical copy. And when you factor in digital ratios, it has to sell at about $23~ dollar more. That's a huge difference.

Higher prices are also objectively a deal breaker to a lot of gamers, they definitely will have an impact on sales performance overall. But I would agree that Switch 2 cartridge prices shouldn't discourage publishers from supporting the console, because the money they make on Switch 2 is an added bonus to the sales of the other versions.

From a business perspective though, I don't know if expensive cartridges would be more successful than cheaper game key cards. I'm inclined to say they are, because many of those who won't buy 3rd party games at such high prices will either wait for a deal, or get the games digitally (which would be more profitable than physical even when sold at $20 cheaper).

The Steam Deck OLED can't cap out after just about an hour!

The maximal output is 25 Watts including the display (15 Watts for the SoC) and it has a 50 Wh battery. So unless the battery is defect, two hours are the minimum.

And according to Digital Foundry, in Hogwarts Legacy the Switch 2 had a battery life of 2 hours and 45 minutes, the Steam Deck OLED with similar settings over 4 hours. 

https://youtu.be/wJXMNsNZtFU?si=P5qEyKtFwALoBWrk

They can offer "Collector's Editions" of physical games that have the physical cartridge with small print runs, but even that would likely come with some sobering caveats

1.) You as the consumer pay the $16 surchage for the cartridge. You want it, well then you pay for it, don't complain afterwards. That would mean things like a $79.99 game like Madden NFL 26 or Star Wars Outlaws is now $95.99 for you. Basically all your third party games will be $80-$90, have fun with that.

2.) The whole "yeah but at least I got the whole game on the cartridge right!" would also still be wrong. You would still need patches and downloads for most games no different from PS5/XSS disc titles. And for a lot of games 64GB wouldn't be enough, so you'd have to download the extra data to your internal storage or memory. So just understand that physical format does not equal "owning the entire game!" technically. You still have to download stuff and may have to download game data itself if the game is above 64GB.

3.) The game off cartridge is going to perform likely the worst, most people don't understand this because there's only a few games on cartridge thus far, but as we go along they're going to start to understand the cartridge basically has way worse loading times. In some cases the 400MB/sec cartridges may not be fast enough to run the game period so you'll just take the data sitting on the cartridge and move it onto the internal flash storage or an SD Card to play it. Which is dumb, but it is what it is. 

That's fair if you understand all that. The reason Nintendo doesn't really want to push this is because it's fucking confusing for Average Shopper/Grandpa Trying To Buy A Game For Their 11 Year Old type thing.

You see there's a Game Key Card version of Madden NFL or Star Wars Outlaws for $79.99, next to it is a Collectors Physical Cartridge Edition for $95.99 ... it can become a lot. They may not understand what is different and not understand it's the same game just a different format. I guess you could pull it off by differentiating the package and really emphasizing it's a Collectors Edition, but I can see why for Nintendo this wasn't an attractive option.

They did. The cartridge has significantly worse loading times especially in Mario Kart. 

Even though they try to brush it aside on Cyberpunk 2077 ... that's still a notably longer loading time than the other formats, I don't get why you would want to play the game in that way, just transfer the damn data onto your internal flash storage. 

For preservation this doesn't matter so much. Internet is an aspect of modern gaming but I think it's completely fair to want a physical edition of a game that works without storefront access and that is very possible. There are plenty of games where digital foundary have wanted to test earlier versions on PS5/SX, so play it from disc pre-patches. 

Using cheap/slow speed catridges to hold the game then requiring and install would be as cheap if not cheaper than Switch catridges and developers can absolutely squeeze all of their games into 64GB if their intention is to properly port it to the S2 which does not need 4k assets or the highest quality audio etc.

Well I don't agree, I think Nintendo made the best choice possible for the ecosystem and came up with a good compromise. Game Key Cards lets the Switch 2 and publishers have pricing and profit margin parity with the XBox Series and PS5 physical games, it allows retailers to still sell physical copies of games and get their cut, it allows granpa/grandma to buy a phyiscal gift to give to children, and even allows for physical games to be resold while saving money for the consumer.

I wish Nintendo was this pragmatic back in the day with the N64 which was ruined by fucking cartridges. Yeah I'm sorry I'm a retro gamer but I don't worship cartridges, in Nintendo's case they've done a lot of harm, I was there I remember paying $80-$90 for N64 cartridges in 1996/97/98 etc. The hipster doofus crowd born post-90s nowadays that thinks everyone loved cartridges back in the day, I can tell you that is not the case and paying insane cartridge prices for games back then *sucked*. Watching Nintendo lose all their 3rd party support *sucked*. Having long ass game droughts because of no 3rd parties because of cartridges *sucked*. Cartridges are only workable as a format when they are dirt cheap, the moment they start to get overly expensive is  the moment the same shit stream of problems re-emerges. 

Most people trying to drum up outrage over this issue are ignorant of the facts, they think cartridges just fall out of the sky from the tooth fairy or cost some low amount that can be easily subsidized. Not understanding things like the internal storage of the Switch 2 being much faster means the cartridge has to at least keep up, which means the cartridge then becomes significantly more expensive on top of needing more storage overall. Same reason why yeah back in the day you could easily buy some 4TB SATA HDD for your PS4 for dirt cheap, nowadays a 1-2TB SSD is much more expensive, because SSD is much faster. You have  to pay more for that. Same thing applies to faster cartridges, that speed (which is still much slower than S2's internal storage or SD Card Express, still doesn't come for free. 

The fact is if they allowed $95 games from 3rd parties as a standard, the so-called "rational game community" would've shit their pants 10x worse and complained non-stop about the games being unaffordable and not handled the situation with any maturity whatsoever. That backlash would be worse than the GKC debate IMO, much worse. Even as is watching the continued desperate for click rage baiters still trying to drum up nonsense and being so frustrated that the system is selling great and the general public is not giving a shit about what they're talking about is funny. 

They didn't really - Alex Battaglia said in latest DF direct he would like to test SATA SSDs and Outlaws. So when (and if) they actually do it, we can look at the results and see at what transfer speeds Outlaws starts stuttering (or something worse).

The Switch 2 cartridge is still slower than a SATA SSD so I'm not sure what that would prove anyway, but even if it did it doesn't make the cartridges cost $10 less anyway.