Lenovo Legion GO 2 (1099-1479 USD) - Star Wars Outlaws

Struggling to stay above 30fps even at 800p low settings 

Legion GO 2 Spec: CPU: Z2 GPU: Radeon 780m RAM: 16 SDD: 512G

The cost of a 64GB Switch 2 Cart and the cost of a theoretical 64GB Switch 1 Cart should be roughly the same.
It's just a chunk of NAND (Macronix's XtraROM) with some EEEPROM for saving.

The memory controller is actually inside the console itself. (It's cheaper to include a memory controller in every console, rather than every cart as every cart would require an orders-of-magnitude more chips over the consoles life.)

The performance difference should be negligible/non-existent as the memory will transfer at the memory controllers speed which for the Switch 2 uses the eMMC 5.1 standard, which is capped at about 400MB/s. Sadly eMMC tends to lack a full duplex communication system, so it's not bi-directional with it's transfer rates, which I guess for non-writable media like a cart... Is a non issue.

However eMMC is much lower in IOPS, which is where the real bottleneck likely comes into play.

As for the cart sizes issue... Remember Switch 2 64GB carts are backwards compatible and forwards compatible between the Switch 1 and Switch 2, which is why we can use a Switch 2 cart of Breath of the Wild in the Switch 1 console... It's speed will drop down from 400MB/s to around 90MB/s. - It's just a chunk of NAND memory, the memory controller inside the console determines the negotiated speed.
The only thing that prevents a 64GB cart ever running on a Switch 1 console is a software lockout by a developer.

Just like there is nothing preventing a 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB or 32GB cart running on a Switch 2. It's just a software lockout by a developer or policy restriction by Nintendo.


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And for developers who proclaim that the transfer rates of a Switch cart is not sufficient... They can take the approach of using the cart as data storage and install the game to the internal drive, just like optical media has been doing for decades.
It would take just a couple of minutes for an install verses several hours for a download, for those who are on marginal internet connections, that could be a massive advantage for them.

Or... Create a swap file on the console to stream cart data to faster internal memory, you would only need a few gigabytes at a time.

It allows you to install and run a game without an internet connection.

Nintendo's servers won't be online indefinitely. Game preservation is important to some people.

 It's not like Game Key Card games are that much cheaper for the consumer anyway.

Whilst true, I don't wish to modify my consoles to play retro games via ROM dumps.

And yet, Daemon X Machina Titanic Scion costs the same in every platform, including S2 and its incredibly expensive cartridge.

The Z2E is really disappointing. Been wanting to upgrade my Z1E Rog Ally, but no good upgrade. The options are the very incremental Z2E or a Ryzen AI  Max+ 395 handheld that is enormous and barely a handheld. 

Medusa Point sounds like a dead-end too. Switch 2 probably is going to be competitive with PC handhelds for a while. 

We don't really have to guess what Switch 2 cartridges cost, Arc Systems Works stated they are $16 per cartridge.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch2/comments/1kjo1l5/cartridge_cost_16_devs_each_switch_2_game_formats/

That's a pretty significant amount. Not as terrible as N64 carts, but that's really high. Assuming the net margin on a retail copy of game for a developer varies from $30-$40 (and I'm probably being generous there), $16 of that is a massive chunk of the profit margin. 

Some devs may opt to eat that cost, but it's entirely reasonable why a lot of devs won't. No they're evil or rip-off corporations, this is just the reality of the cartridge medium. It comes with a lot of headaches that almost every other format doesn't. 

Impressive that the Switch 2 more than holds its own against $1500 handhelds and walled consoles like the XBox Series S. 

The other kinda neat thing is the software release cycle hasn't even really begun to open up but it already feels like 3rd party wise this is going to be the best supported Nintendo system since the Super NES. 

Just from like mid-August to mid-September is like Madden NFL, Cronos, Star Wars Outlaws, NBA 2K26, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and I hadn't even noticed but like Borderlands 4, a major AAA 3rd party game launches this week too, lol. Feels like there's plenty to play. 

Not sure what AMD is thinking - not only 395+ has RDNA3.5, but Medusa will have it as well. Which is, while they can brute force quite a bit, very disappointing, given how much better RDNA4 in RX90 series is, and pretty much solves both RT and uspcaling problems of their previous architectures.

Maybe they just don't care to bother with RDNA4, probably seeing it as short transitory period to the actually great stuff that UDNA should be...

Well. They lost an entire sale with me... And many others feel the same. - Some revenue is better than none.

Part of the reason why Cyberpunk 2077 dominated sales on Switch 2 for 3rd party releases was largely attributed to having the complete game on cart.

Profits is a shit excuse anyway, considering Switch 2 games have RISEN in price in order to compensate.
..And even with "expensive carts" - Developers and publishers were constantly posting record profits and revenues over the last several decades when games were statically pegged at $60 USD anyway.

So yes, they are ripping us off, they were already making money hand over fist.

Game Key Cards are cheaper to manufacture than Switch carts... Yet Game Key Card games are more expensive, so the consumer is definitely being screwed over here... Let's not defend shit decisions. 

Consumers are being screwed over. Consumers are being ripped off.
Game Key Cards are eWaste.

AMD's integrated graphics have typically been a step behind desktop offerings.

When AMD moves to UDNA, integrated graphics will be on RDNA4.

I mean c'mon, I get that most gamers don't understand the business very well, but not understanding that say a 40% of a profit margin (assuming a $40 net take on each retail copy, which probably is overstated on my part to begin with) is crazy. That would be something significant for any business be it a pizza parlour, a hair salon, a car rental service etc, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, a car company, etc. etc. etc. etc. 30-40% of your margin in not small potatoes. Why do people think video games should operate on a completely different set of rules. 

Cartridges always suck when they get too expensive.

It happened in the 80s (so much so that Nintendo wanted to ditch them entirely for the Disk Drive), it happened in the 90s (cost Nintendo their entire leadership of the traditional home console market and they've never really regained that part of it), and with Switch 2 requiring these higher speed carts, at $16 a pop that's simply an fairly high cost. This was always going to be a problem too as the Switch 2 can run modern gen games, but a lot of these modern games are well over 64GB even these days. The pricing was always going to become a problem unless Nintendo scaled their ambitions down, and thankfully they haven't because that would suck. 

Some devs, particularly with lower budget games and games that have already broke even into profitability (so likely older ports) may opt to eat the cost of the cartridge by passing it on through the price of the game, but rationally you can't expect every developer to do so. Like Star Wars Outlaws, they're probably still trying to pay off the monstrous development budget for that game, they probably have not broken even ($200-$300 million dollar budget), they may never break even. You really think they ought to just eat $16 a copy ... they need that margin. 

Again game developers are in the game business, not the collectibles and archiving and keepsake business. The fact that a little collecting enclave emerged in the industry doesn't mean game developers ever signed up for that business model to begin with. 

The simple solution is to just have Collector's Editions limited print runs of cartridges for games, with the understanding that 64GB won't hold every game's entire game data even, but for people who really must, must, have it ... fine. Let them pay whatever the digital copy/GKC copy's cost is + $16, so in the range of $80-$96 for certain games. You want it, then pay for it, nothing outrageous about that at all. If I want a game controller with $20 additional hardware cost in features, I should expect to pay $20 more than a controller that doesn't have those features, that has nothing to do with "manufacturer greed!!!!".

I'm not sure they can allow themselves anymore to be generation late. Also, I'm fully expecting PS6P to have UDNA, like PS6, so that tech will probably be what will power PC handhelds as well.