The Switch 2 requires the much faster and more modern SD Express type of expansion card, which means my old 1TB SD card from my OLED Switch won’t work. However, before swiping my credit card to buy one, it occurred to me that I probably don’t need that extra storage, and that’s probably true for a lot of you reading this.
So, instead of having a bunch of games downloaded to my Switch 2, why not download some, finish them, and then delete them? What a revolutionary idea!
SD Express Cards Are Still Too Expensive
I know “expensive” is a relative term, and I could certainly afford, say, a 256GB microSD Express to double the storage that ships with the console, but I still feel like $60 is too much for that amount of storage. A 512GB card will run you about $120, and be prepared to pay over $200 for a 1TB model. At least the price seems to scale well with the capacities, but considering the cost of the console itself, I don’t feel like I actually need to expand that base storage yet.
I don’t want to buy a 256GG card now, for example, and then have to buy a bigger card in a year or two for a better price. That ends up eroding the gains of the cards getting cheaper Unlike regular microSD cards, the only device I have that uses these cards is my Switch 2. So a second card would be superfluous, unless I swapped between them, I guess. That said, I hope tons of people do buy these cards for their Switch 2 consoles, because that should drive the price down for the rest of us!
Samsung 256GB microSD Express Card
While some microSD Express cards aren’t terribly expensive, you’re able to still get a norma microSD card of the same capacity for cheaper.
My first Switch only had 32GB of storage, and my OLED Switch wasn’t much better at 64GB, so expansion was pretty much a must. I started out with a 128GB card, but as my collection grew I went to a 400GB card, then 512GB, and finally a 1TB card. All of these cards are still in use on other devices. The 1TB is in my Legion Go. The 512GB is in my wife’s OLED Switch, and the 400GB is in—actually, hang on—yeah, that 400GB card was fried by my ASUS ROG Ally. I still feel like ASUS owes me for that one, to be honest.
In the end, my collection of digital Switch games wouldn’t even fit on a 1TB card, and although the Switch theoretically supports up to a 2TB SD card, I’ve never actually seen one for sale or in real life. The thing is, despite having so many games within arms' reach, I usually only played a small subset of them, and repeatedly ran into that dreaded choice paralysis.
In other words, despite having so many games on my Switch, I never played most of them. So what was the point of buying those games and paying for all that storage?
New Rule—Finish My Games and Delete Them
I’ve filled up the 256GB of storage in my Switch 2, and this has resulted in a very healthy number and variety of games on my console. Even huge games likeCyberpunk 2077only take up about a quarter of the available space, and most games are much smaller than that. Especially at this point in the Switch 2 life cycle where most games are still Switch 1 titles.
However, right now, I have CP2077,Hogwarts: Legacy,Xenoblade 2, and several smaller titles all on my Switch 2 and that’s more than enough. So, I’m making a rule that I’ll download as many games that interest me into my internal storage as I can, and then either finish them and delete them, or decide that I don’t actually want to play them—and then delete them.
With a smaller number of games, and a good variety of genres, I’m finding it much easier to actually decide what I feel like playing. That’s better than staring at three differentPersonagames for five minutes, and then just turning my console off instead.
Besides, my internet connection iswayfaster than it was when the first Switch launched. These days, even a 100GB game downloads in less than an hour. So the pressure to have heaps of local storage on my Switch 2 is greatly reduced. If I’m taking my console somewhere there’s no internet, there’s sure to be something on it I want to play.
It’s a Good Excuse to Buy Physical Games Too!
I didn’t buy many physical games for my Switch, but I did make a point of comparing prices with physical copies before I bought anything on the Nintendo eShop. Which means I ended up with a decent physical collection. Given the price of microSD Express cards, I think I might double down on that with the Switch 2 generation. Unfortunately, there are many “physical” Nintendo Switch 2 games that are “game key cards”. These don’t have any data on them and you have to download the game to your own storage.
Even worse, it seems like Switch 2 game cards currently have the slowest data transfer speeds of the three possible storage types, with internal and microSD Express taking the first and second positions respectively. This is actually why I bought the digital version ofCyberpunk 2077and saved it to the internal SSD, because I’d seen that loading times could be much longer from its game card version, even though it’s complete and on the cart.
So, here’s hoping that some moderate self control and a few rules can make me a more diligent player during the Switch 2 generation, and that I can finally actually enjoy the stupidly-large digital Switch game collection I’ve amassed since 2016.
