You’re gonna want an SD card.
Today, Nintendo revealed sizes of some of the Switch’s upcoming games, and one will require extra storage right off the bat.
The Switch advertises its 32 GB of internal memory, but the operating system takes up a bit of that. We learned from a leaked Switch UI video that the out-of-box storage is a mere 25.9 GB.
File size information is listed on the individual games’ pages on Nintendo of Japan’s website, but here’s a quick list of them all:
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 13.4 GB
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 8.00 GB
- Puyo Puyo Tetris – 1.09 GB
- Disgaea 5 – 5.92 GB
- Snipperclips – 1.60 GB
- I Am Setsuna – 1.40 GB
- Dragon Quest Heroes I & II – 32.00 GB
- Nobunaga’s Ambition – 5.00 GB
Most of these sizes seem pretty standard. Breath of the Wild lines up with what we’ve heard before, but it still takes up half of the out-of-box storage.
Did you notice Dragon Quest weighing in at a whopping 32 GB? That’s more storage than the Switch actually has available, so you’ll need a microSD card if you want a digital version of that particular game. Nintendo confirmed this by advising “a microSD card of 32GB or more is required separately” to play Dragon Quest.
A 32 GB microSDXC costs around $19.99. That’s another whole $20 you’ll have to spend to be able to download one game. Pro tip: Just get a physical copy.
Nintendo has said the Switch will support cards of up to 2 TB, but microSDXC cards of that size aren’t available yet. You can’t even purchase a 1 TB card yet. The largest available microSDXC card is currently 512 GB, and that’ll cost you $200.
Remember that this only applies to digital games, not physical ones. While PlayStation and Xbox physical games require an install, Nintendo games do not. So if you aren’t looking to spend any extra money on storage for your Switch, I’d stick to physical copies for the bigger games.
The Nintendo Switch launches worldwide on March 3rd at $300 MSRP.
