The biggest failure of Nintendo Switch is a great opportunity for the future

The biggest failure of Nintendo Switch is a great opportunity for the future

I love the Switch, to the point where I can forgive many of its flaws. Of course, it can't do 4K. Often unable to muster stable performance. It is awash with terrible ports. Oh, and the online infrastructure could be so much better.

All things worthy of criticism. But they were never a deal breaker for me. After all, if I let frame rates and higher resolutions dictate my buying habits, I'd be missing out on a lot of the best Nintendo Switch games. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and the recent Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, to name a few.

But there is one thing that really bugs me about the Nintendo Switch. Not only the base console, but also the Nintendo Switch OLED. And that's the paltry amount of storage space, something the company will need to address for its future hardware projects.

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Boy holding a Nintendo switch

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The Switch might be a period improvement over the Wii U, but it seems Nintendo wasn't too keen on fixing one of that system's many flaws. The basic white variant of the Wii U came with a measly 8GB of storage. Only if you were willing to pay more for the Deluxe package would you get a shiny black console with 32GB of storage.

Actually, that's where we're at with the entry-level Switch model as well. The portable hybrid launched in 2017 with just 32GB of storage space. And in 2021 we got the Nintendo Switch OLED, which doubled that number to 64GB, but overall, that's still way below what the competition is offering.

On PS5, you get 1TB on both the physical and digital versions. It's a similar story with Microsoft: 1TB on Xbox Series X and 512GB on Xbox Series S. These can be further bolstered with internal SSDs on PS5 and accessories like the Seagate storage expansion card on Xbox.

This last approach also applies to Switch. You can purchase additional microSD cards to give your console's storage a much-needed upgrade. The difference is that buying a microSD card for the Switch can seem non-negotiable, especially if you download a lot of games. It's easy to fill up that meager amount of storage much faster than you'd like.

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E3 2021 BOTH 2

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So what can Nintendo do to address this issue in the future, and should it, given that the price of its consoles would likely increase as a result? I think the answer is a resounding yes here. Nintendo Switch games, especially first-party titles and many third-party ports, have only grown in size in recent years.

Take Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which was released in late July. At 15 GB, it's the largest Xenoblade mainline game to date. And on a basic Switch with no microSD card installed, it will consume just under half of the total available storage space. The equivalent on PS5 would be a game that would take up around 400-500 GB of space. Not even games that require a lot of storage like Call of Duty: Warzone or Horizon Forbidden West can claim to achieve this.

Plus, Nintendo's first outing is only going to get more ambitious over time. We already know that Monolith Soft is working on a gigantic new IP. Similarly, future Zelda titles will likely surpass even Breath of the Wild 2 in terms of capping.

Therefore, Nintendo must bring its A game in terms of storage space to its future consoles. And I don't mean just a modest bump to something like 128GB - while even smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S22 can offer up to 256GB of storage space, Nintendo has no excuse not to beef up its tech.

At a minimum, I'd like to see Nintendo's next flagship console clock in at least 256GB of storage space. But 512GB or even 1TB would be a real win. Hopefully, an update like this would come with other much-requested specs like 4K resolution and support for higher frame rates. Many of us now treat the Switch like an Xbox or PlayStation on the go, and Nintendo needs to do the same.