In 2025, 256 gigabytes just isn’t enough, and tacking on more storage isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Unfortunately, just two months on from release, my console’s drive is already full. Since my copy of Bananza is digital, I've had to start juggling game installs to experience the great ape’s latest adventure.
I'm probably an outlier in having maxed out capacity already, but storage anxiety is an issue that's likely to worsen for many users over the Switch 2's lifespan, and there don't appear to be any easy fixes on the horizon. Storage Wars At a glance, the Switch 2's storage situation looks rosy. The console itself comes with 256 GB, which is eight times more than the original Switch's paltry 32 GB and four times the 64 GB of the Switch OLED. System software on Switch 2 is impressively small, using a smidge over 6 GB, leaving owners with a generous-sounding ~249 GB. The problem is that 249 GB ain't what it used to be, and the Switch 2 demands you use far more of that storage than the original Switch did. The latest generation of performance, such as 4K HDR output, is necessary as Nintendo competes against both home console rivals Sony and Microsoft, and the growing number of handheld gaming PCs aiming for the Switch's portable gaming crown. However, improvements mean bigger installs for Switch 2 native games, eating up more and more of that precious space. While Nintendo has mastered getting big results from small game sizes—open-world racer Mario Kart World is 24 GB digitally, while Donkey Kong Bananza clocks in at a mere 8.7 GB—other developers aren't as trim. JRPG Bravely Default HD, a remaster of a Nintendo 3DS game, eats up 11 GB , while co-op adventure Split Fiction demands a staggering 69.2 GB—over a quarter of the internal storage for that one game alone. If you think that sounds like an incentive to embrace physical media instead, saving space for digital-only games … well, you'd be right. Unfortunately, on Switch 2, that's not the option it once was. A Key Problem The issue is exacerbated by Nintendo's introduction of GameKey Cards for some physical games. These don't have games installed on them, merely a bearer token that allows users to download a game digitally while requiring the cartridge to be inserted to play it. Although at the time of writing, Nintendo itself hasn't released any of its first-party games in the GameKey Card format, almost every third-party game released for the Switch 2 has opted for GKCs . I maintain that GameKey Cards are a significant improvement for collectors over the original Switch's code-in-a-box releases. GKCs can be traded in or sold, since access to the game is tied to the cartridge rather than a user account, and they don't leave collectors with an empty, useless case after a single-use download code has been redeemed. But the format's inescapable drawback is that it demands yet more of the Switch 2's already over-stretched storage. Switch 2 cartridges that can house game data are limited to 64 GB, further compounding the issue. Even if publisher EA wanted to release Split Fiction on a cartridge—its 'physical' release is code-in-a-box, not even a GKC—the mammoth install size couldn't fit on the cards available. Larger cards could help here, but given the bespoke design, they may prove prohibitively expensive to produce. Plus, if third parties aren't using current 64-GB cards—chonkers such as Hitman: World of Assassination , Street Fighter 6 , and Yakuza 0: Director's Cut could all fit, but instead are released as GKCs—is there any point in doubling the size and cost? As it stands, players have no alternative but to bid adieu to even more storage if any of those games take their fancy. The Backward Compatibility Compromise One of the best things about the Switch 2 is its near-universal backward compatibility. Here, physical games have an edge, as Switch 1 carts have the actual game data, while digitally owned Switch 1 titles claim more virtual real estate alongside ballooning Switch 2 titles. Physical Switch 1 cartridges aren't immune to data bloat on the Switch 2, though. While many Switch 1 games see a performance boost running on Switch 2, benefiting from faster load times and improved frame rates, Nintendo is releasing upgrade packs for key titles—think of them as optional downloadable remasters. If you want The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to look its absolute best on Switch 2, that pack demands 9.7 GB of space, even if you have your original physical copy of the game. The fully digital release leaps from around 14 to 24 GB with the upgrade, or roughly 10 percent of the Switch 2's storage. Beyond original Switch games and upgrades gobbling up precious storage, the Switch 2 also sees the addition of GameCube titles to the retro library available to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers. Like the classic games available for earlier consoles such as the NES, SNES, or Game Boy, these are all packaged in one launcher, with every game in the respective collection installed at once. That's fine for the SNES collection—with around 80 titles crammed into a barely-noticeable 267 MB bundle, who cares if there’s a bunch you'll never play? Yet with just four titles presently available , NSO GameCube is already a 6-GB commitment. Original GameCube discs could hold just shy of 1.5 GB, so each addition is going to see that launcher demand ever more space, and each unwanted game could prevent you from installing something else you want to play. While this only affects NSO subscribers who use the GameCube library, the freedom to choose which GameCube games get installed would be a huge help. The Problem With the Solution The good news is that Switch 2 still allows users to expand storage via microSD cards. Problem solved—just whack a massive capacity card in, right? Not quite. Switch 2 only supports microSD Express format cards. There's good reason for this—the new standard offers much faster data read and write speeds, allowing games to load faster—but the rule causes problems. One is cost. MicroSD Express cards cost more per GB of storage than their predecessors. At the time of writing, a SanDisk 128 GB card is $17, while its Switch 2-compatible microSD Express format card is $54 for the same amount of storage—a 3X premium. Another is card capacities. There are a handful of 1-terabyte microSD Express cards on the market, but supplies are vanishingly low, and prices are astronomical. Although you can technically use multiple microSD cards with your console, Nintendo advises against it, so swapping several smaller cards around isn't an option either. More confusingly, the SD Express format only refers to speed, not capacity, which has its own standards. Most microSD cards you're likely to buy, whether they're in the Express speed format or not, are 'SD eXtended Capacity' standard, or SDXC. These can theoretically hold a maximum of 2 TB of data, though the largest legitimate card you're likely to find on sale is 1.5 TB. However, in 2018, the SD Association—the industry body that sets standards for SD memory cards—introduced SD Ultra Capacity, or SDUC. This supports capacities up to a staggering 128 TB, “regardless of form factor, either micro or full size, or interface type including SD Express.” There are no SDUC cards on the market at all yet, so we're a long, long way from being able to slap 'even' an 8-TB card in your Switch 2 and install everything you could dream of. In theory, though, surely this means you'll one day be able to do just that? Again, not quite. Beyond the microSD Express requirement for speed, the Switch 2 only supports cards up to 2 TB in capacity. For now, this is a nonissue—the largest microSD Express cards on the market are half that at 1 TB, and all are in the SDXC format for storage, which maxes out at 2 TB anyway. What's less clear is whether the Switch 2 will support SDUC cards when they eventually enter the marketplace. If it does, a firmware update might lift that 2-TB cap. If not, 2 TB of SDXC is the Switch 2's ultimate storage fate. Nintendo did not respond to our request for comment. There are some reasons for the storage anxious to be optimistic, though. The mere existence and huge success of the Switch 2 will see more consumers demand microSD Express cards, eventually driving prices down and capacities up, at least to the SDXC standard's 2-TB limit. For most players, that amount of storage is realistically enough for all but the most covetous data hoarders. Consumer backlash could also push more third-party publishers into releasing their physical games on cartridges, rather than as Game-Key Cards, reducing storage demands. Even simpler, if Nintendo provided more control to the user—choosing which GameCube games to install or officially supporting swapping microSD cards—players themselves could easily manage their digital collections. In the meantime, as Switch 2 digital libraries grow, there's only one option: getting used to juggling installs for the foreseeable future.
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