Hardware Was Nintendo reasonable for only including 256GB internal storage?

The Real Jdbye · Apr 24, 2026

Marc_LFD said:
256GB feels so small these days that I ended up buying a 256GB Express SD so adding both together, my console has around 500GB total (379GB free). So no, not really.

I did buy a 512GB Express SD card, haven't used it yet.

It reminds me of Apple's Mac Book Neo, it has 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. It's like both of them are including the bare minimum as they know it'll sell.

You couldn't even buy MicroSD Express cards larger than 256 GB until well after the Switch 2 release. I don't know that even if Nintendo wanted to offer larger storage, if they would've been able to source the chips needed, if nobody was making them.

Anyways, I think 256 GB with expandable storage is pretty reasonable. Many (or even most) devices sold with 256 GB storage don't have that. You'd be hard pressed to find any smartphone nowadays with expandable storage that isn't a budget smartphone and those only give you the bare minimum of internal storage and pretty much expect you to always use a MicroSD.
Personally, I'd much rather have a small amount of internal storage (even just 32-64 GB) with the option of a MicroSD, than a larger (say 512 GB or 1 TB) internal storage without that option, since popping in a MicroSD is so easy and you're able to upgrade it as your storage needs grow.

NinStar · Apr 24, 2026

DiscostewSM said:
MicroSD are designed to be swapped in and out on occasion. You going to do that with NVMe that holds the OS, critical system data and such? You put in a bigger NVMe drive, and you leave it. MicroSD actually expands with multiple cards, not replacing.

The fact that microSD is even a thing for these devices shows they don't "require" something newer. As it is, games are compressed, and the bottleneck for PC loading is on the CPU as they doesn't have dedicated decompression hardware to handle the job in tandem. Consoles like PS5, Series, and Switch 2 do. That is why Switch 2 is using microSD Express.

To say microSD Express is outdated when it's newer than NVMe is pretty laughable.

It feels like you are intentionally misinterpreting everything I said. I stated that microSD is an outdated technology and the only option they had was to go for SD Express (you know, to have a decent performance), which is niche.

The fact they choose it as the only way to expand storage on the Switch 2 is my problem with it. I could take the Steam Deck as a good example, which works with microSD cards, but isn't the only way to expand it's storage. Also, the point you made about decompression doesn't seem that relevant to what I said? You say that as if it's a reason for the Switch 2 to exclusively use SD Express, then you mention two consoles that uses SSDs? I really don't get what you are trying to say here.

FernandoRocker · Apr 24, 2026

AndorfRequissa said:
one of the main reasons im skipping the switch 2 and waiting for the switch 3 is that the hardware is so outdated and just not realistic for a hardcore gamer.

i also wanted an actual console version. personally i wish they would offer a model that isnt a hybrid and is a real console because 99% of my gaming is done on a tv and a dock. ive used my og switch maybe 10-15x outside of its dock.

You can't name another handheld with the same specs for $450. Especially not with an included 4K dock, HDMI 2.1 cable, mouse sensors and a Joy-Con grip included.

You just can't.

DiscostewSM · Apr 24, 2026

NinStar said:
It feels like you are intentionally misinterpreting everything I said. I stated that microSD is an outdated technology and the only option they had was to go for SD Express (you know, to have a decent performance), which is niche.

The fact they choose it as the only way to expand storage on the Switch 2 is my problem with it. I could take the Steam Deck as a good example, which works with microSD cards, but isn't the only way to expand it's storage. Also, the point you made about decompression doesn't seem that relevant to what I said? You say that as if it's a reason for the Switch 2 to exclusively use SD Express, then you mention two consoles that uses SSDs? I really don't get what you are trying to say here.

You stated that they stuck with SD cards AND it is dated technology, when microSD Express in of itself is not dated at all.

And we're talking about a console. A closed platform. None of these consoles today have the means to swap out their internal storage, and given how the Switch 2's internal space is jam-packed and thinner than any portable PC to date, just how would they be able to accommodate a swap? Mentioning the Steam Deck isn't enough when the method to actually swap that internal drive is more than most people are willing to deal with. It's really only for the enthusiasts willing to open up their device and mess with the internals, which isn't covered under warranty if something goes wrong. Hell, even Valve doesn't recommend messing with it.

I brought up the whole compression situation because it's a major limiter to using "new" technology when the method to decompress is still dated. Steam Deck only shows a range of 10-30% improvement in load times loading from an NVMe than a microSD that pushes around 90-100MB/s read speed, because the CPU is already loaded. Even if it wasn't, decompression is slow on the CPU that the NVMe drive would never reach its potential. It's only good for copying large files. PS5's decompression block can take an input of 5.5GB/s to output around 9GB/s, and Series can work with an input of 2.4GB/s to around 4.8GB/s, and that isn't taking away from CPU time. We don't know how fast Switch 2 does it with its decompression block, but given they are using microSD Express capable of ~800MB/s, it's certainly more capable than loading from a fast NVMe drive with CPU decompression.

I think it's you that doesn't really understand the situation.

AndorfRequissa · Apr 24, 2026

FernandoRocker said:
You can't name another handheld with the same specs for $450. Especially not with an included 4K dock, HDMI 2.1 cable, mouse sensors and a Joy-Con grip included.

You just can't.

im not contending that it is a bad price. i would have happily spent more money on a real console that wasnt a hybrid and wasnt a portable. the gaming industry and tech in general has gotten expensive and nintendo remains one of the better priced options on the market but the thing im saying is that its not cutting edge and they took alot of unneeded hits by not offering options. they should have released a switch 2 lite which is what the system that got released should have been called, a beefed up portable could have been called the switch 2 pro, and a switch 2 console that is not portable and beefed up console. the horizon OS could have easily supported all these editions and allowed for games to run at better framerates on the options that alot of people really wanted.

there woulda been fanboys that bought all the different options and they would have sold to a wider demographic than what they currently are selling to.

hollowtip · Apr 24, 2026

It depends on your situation. Considering I have a fast internet connection and I only play (at maximum) three games at time, I can always download a game I previously played in minutes if I want to replay it later down the line.

Yes it's nice to have your entire Switch Library immediately available to play, but I can't justify spending $90 on a MicroSD EX card just so I can fit a few more games on it that I might not even play ever again. Furthermore, 1st party Switch exclusives are at most 25GB with most being 10GB or under.

Even on my PC, 2TB is PLENTY for what I need since I rarely go back to games once beat or get bored of them. Once I'm done with a game it's deleted off my SSD (saved games are retained though). If I theoretically wanted to go back to a 200GB sized title, I could redownload it in under an hour.

Unless money is no object or you don't have a good internet connection, I honestly don't understand the obsession of having an exorbitant amount of storage to keep a library of games (on your Switch 2 or any other gaming device for that matter) that you barely will ever or never play.

Marc_LFD · Apr 24, 2026

hollowtip said:
It depends on your situation. Considering I have a fast internet connection and I only play (at maximum) three games at time, I can always download a game I previously played in minutes if I want to replay it later down the line.

Yes it's nice to have your entire Switch Library immediately available to play, but I can't justify spending $90 on a MicroSD EX card just so I can fit a few more games on it that I might not even play ever again. Furthermore, 1st party Switch exclusives are at most 25GB with most being 10GB or under.

Even on my PC, 2TB is PLENTY for what I need since I rarely go back to games once beat or get bored of them. Once I'm done with a game it's deleted off my SSD (saved games are retained though). If I theoretically wanted to go back to a 200GB sized title, I could redownload it in under an hour.

Unless money is no object or you don't have a good internet connection, I honestly don't understand the obsession of having an exorbitant amount of storage to have a library of games (on your Switch 2 or any other gaming device for that matter) that you barely will ever or never play.

That's a good point. My PS4 Pros have 1TB/2TB SSDs and my PS5 has a 2TB SSD so while I wish it was bigger, that's just about enough for me.

256GB for a gaming console in 2025/26 is just quite small, though.

emmauss · Apr 24, 2026

AndorfRequissa said:
im not contending that it is a bad price. i would have happily spent more money on a real console that wasnt a hybrid and wasnt a portable. the gaming industry and tech in general has gotten expensive and nintendo remains one of the better priced options on the market but the thing im saying is that its not cutting edge and they took alot of unneeded hits by not offering options. they should have released a switch 2 lite which is what the system that got released should have been called, a beefed up portable could have been called the switch 2 pro, and a switch 2 console that is not portable and beefed up console. the horizon OS could have easily supported all these editions and allowed for games to run at better framerates on the options that alot of people really wanted.

there woulda been fanboys that bought all the different options and they would have sold to a wider demographic than what they currently are selling to.

Consoles are not PC. There has never been a console that did that at launch. There is no reason why a company would release multiple variants of a console at different power levels without cannibalizing the sales of the weaker one. Look at the Xbox Series S/X. You'd think the cheaper one, the S would have sold more. No, it's the X that sold way more, because most people do not want to just buy the weaker version because it's cheaper. So why have 2 differently powered systems in the same release. Even PS4 and PS5 Pro models were released in the middle of the base consoles' lifetime, and they were an easy way to upgrade while selling your already old base console.

As for whether such a thing could be possible? No. You may say the tech used in the Switch 2 is old tech. It isn't. The SOC used in the switch 2, the T239, is the latest gen available to both companies and consumers. Its equivalent to the RTX30 series in feature set, and given that they'd have to have had at least 2 years of engineering, it was pretty much the cutting edge tech Nvidia could provide for the Tegra family. There could never be a more beefy variant of the Switch 2, because it was using the latest model. We currently do not know what the clock speeds the Switch 2 run at, even leaks are not conclusive, but the only thing they could have added in a pro version would just be to increase the clock speeds. Its an ARM chip. They aren't designed for high clock speeds at high power rating.

rudras · Apr 24, 2026

My first impression was to think It could have been worst with Nintendo but now, after some time, it's clearly not enough...
Specialy with the "new" game key card system, boosted switch 1 games bought and (hopefully

) the new games incoming. I think 1To should have made everyone serene on the subject and justify a good part of the price at launch for some people.
But of course Nintendo prefered to give the minimum and want us to buy every accessories with Mario on the disposable packaging for their partnership, including Stockage...
Personaly I already have only around 150 go available in my console for a total of 512 go at start...
Maybe I will buy a 512 go SD card with some discount or something later...or just delete everything with some rage, I dont know...

This console is just annoying until you finally succeed to launch your good enough optimized game in hand...

emmauss · Apr 24, 2026

rudras said:
My first impression was to think It could have been worst with Nintendo but now, after some time, it's clearly not enough...
Specialy with the "new" game key card system, boosted switch 1 games bought and (hopefully) the new games incoming. I think 1To should have made everyone serene on the subject and justify a good part of the price at launch for some people.
But of course Nintendo prefered to give the minimum and want us to buy every accessories with Mario on the disposable packaging for their partnership, including Stockage...
Personaly I already have only around 150 go available in my console for a total of 512 go at start...
Maybe I will buy a 512 go with some discount or something later...or just delete everything with some rage, I dont know...

How much would you pay for a 1TB model.

tglaria · Apr 24, 2026

Marc_LFD said:
There's still years to come and that'll fill up.

When that happens, you can complain ... or just buy the additional storage when you need it.

I see no reason to complain for storage if it could take 3~4 years to start being a problem (it depends on each person) even more if there's a very simple solution.

Why buy now storage for $X money if you'll need it in 4 years when it's expected to cost $X/4?

Whyn bundle the console with more costly storage if it will cost a lot less in 3~4 years when storage could begin to pose a problem.

I don't get it.

Post automatically merged: Apr 24, 2026

AndorfRequissa said:
one of the main reasons im skipping the switch 2 and waiting for the switch 3 is that the hardware is so outdated and just not realistic for a hardcore gamer.

From what I see, Nintendo is not for the hardcore gamer, it's for the casual and yooung/kid gamer.
You shouldn't be buying Nintendo consoles if it doesn't fit your use case instead of complaining that the device is not what you want it to be.

NinStar · Apr 24, 2026

DiscostewSM said:
I brought up the whole compression situation because it's a major limiter to using "new" technology when the method to decompress is still dated. Steam Deck only shows a range of 10-30% improvement in load times loading from an NVMe than a microSD that pushes around 90-100MB/s read speed, because the CPU is already loaded. Even if it wasn't, decompression is slow on the CPU that the NVMe drive would never reach its potential. It's only good for copying large files. PS5's decompression block can take an input of 5.5GB/s to output around 9GB/s, and Series can work with an input of 2.4GB/s to around 4.8GB/s, and that isn't taking away from CPU time. We don't know how fast Switch 2 does it with its decompression block, but given they are using microSD Express capable of ~800MB/s, it's certainly more capable than loading from a fast NVMe drive with CPU decompression.

You are making all these claims without sourcing anything, and again, even if that was the case it's totally irrelevant to my point.

ChibiMofo · Apr 24, 2026

Nintendo has the fastest selling game machine in human history. Twenty million units have sold. The "boycott" by the entitled incels failed miserably (as it always does) and the Switch 2 has been a massive success and Mario Kart World has already sold 16 million copies. Nintendo obviously got the price right, the feature set right, the launch games right and the amount of storage right. Any more storage at all and they would have had to raise the price. Of course Nintendo was reasonable for including EIGHT TIMES the storage of the original Switch!!!

Would I have complained it if had 2TB and was only $499 with an OLED screen? No, but we both know some of you would have. And Nintendo would have been losing hundreds on each unit at that price. As for the Switch 2 not being for hardcore gamers and just for kids, are you high?

DiscostewSM · Apr 24, 2026

NinStar said:
You are making all these claims without sourcing anything, and again, even if that was the case it's totally irrelevant to my point.

Which part? That PCs don't have dedicated decompression hardware? That CPUs are slow in that operation by comparison? This is all common knowledge, and a good indication of why such choices have been made. It is plenty relevant.

NinStar · Apr 24, 2026

DiscostewSM said:
Which part? That PCs don't have dedicated decompression hardware? That CPUs are slow in that operation by comparison? This is all common knowledge, and a good indication of why such choices have been made. It is plenty relevant.

You stated this:

Steam Deck only shows a range of 10-30% improvement in load times loading from an NVMe than a microSD that pushes around 90-100MB/s read speed

Which sounds absurd unless you provide the sources for what you are saying, because this is giving me the impression you are comparing the performance of games with very little I/O and no data streaming at all.

But then again, this is all irrelevant because I was not even arguing about performance, I don't know why you went on a defensive ramble about SD Express when my complaint wasn't about the Switch 2 having it as an option, but about it being the ONLY option to expand storage. Like, come on dude.

The Real Jdbye · Apr 24, 2026

AndorfRequissa said:
im not contending that it is a bad price. i would have happily spent more money on a real console that wasnt a hybrid and wasnt a portable. the gaming industry and tech in general has gotten expensive and nintendo remains one of the better priced options on the market but the thing im saying is that its not cutting edge and they took alot of unneeded hits by not offering options. they should have released a switch 2 lite which is what the system that got released should have been called, a beefed up portable could have been called the switch 2 pro, and a switch 2 console that is not portable and beefed up console. the horizon OS could have easily supported all these editions and allowed for games to run at better framerates on the options that alot of people really wanted.

there woulda been fanboys that bought all the different options and they would have sold to a wider demographic than what they currently are selling to.

What got released is anything but "lite". It's huge. We will probably have a smaller "lite" model a few years down the line along with the obligatory OLED model that really they should have been selling from day 1.

The Catboy · Apr 24, 2026

I am of 2 minds with this
1: It's reasonable if devs actually compressed their games properly. Games don't need to take up as much space as they are taking up.
2: Even with that in mind, they should have still bumped 512GB because games are still big as fuck. If not, they should allow users to upgrade their own hardware. The fact that the internal hardware is still locked down is unacceptable.

DiscostewSM · Apr 24, 2026

NinStar said:
You stated this:

Which sounds absurd unless you provide the sources for what you are saying, because this is giving me the impression you are comparing the performance of games with very little I/O and no data streaming at all.

If you're going to say it "sounds absurd", then you're basically outing yourself from having a word on this subject.

https://www.howtogeek.com/892157/does-your-steam-deck-sd-card-affect-game-loading-times/

But as it is, it's a simple fact that decompression on a PC is rather slow by comparison because it's done on the CPU, and in SD's case, even moreso because the design of it prioritizes the GPU with its 15W limit on the APU. It forces the CPU to throttle down. You might ask why they use an NVMe if it's not taking full advantage of the speed. Answer: It's not because of speed they are using it.

NinStar said:
But then again, this is all irrelevant because I was not even arguing about performance, I don't know why you went on a defensive ramble about SD Express when my complaint wasn't about the Switch 2 having it as an option, but about it being the ONLY option to expand storage. Like, come on dude.

Can't really claim you weren't talking about performance after pushing the idea of something being outdated, when microSD Express is a VERY recent thing. And you're asking why a console, a closed platform, has only one option to expand storage compared to other devices that are not consoles, where the additional option is something even the manufacturers recommend NOT messing with. As noted, it's not because of speed that the portable PCs are using NVMe, but because they are using them, that does allow them to be swapped. But you run the risk of messing with it. MicroSD (and Express) are simple enough for anyone to swap. Swapping out an NVMe of a portable PC is not nearly as straight-forward, especially when it can be covered by cables, other components, and when there's an active battery in the system.

Like, have you ever swapped the NVMe in a Steam Deck?

rudras · Apr 24, 2026

emmauss said:
How much would you pay for a 1TB model.

Around 600 Euros , no more...

OR OF COURSE 649.99 WITH A WONDERFUL (DISPOSABLE) CODE FOR DONKEY KONG BANANZA :switch2:

The Real Jdbye · Apr 24, 2026

DiscostewSM said:
If you're going to say it "sounds absurd", then you're basically outing yourself from having a word on this subject.

https://www.howtogeek.com/892157/does-your-steam-deck-sd-card-affect-game-loading-times/

But as it is, it's a simple fact that decompression on a PC is rather slow by comparison because it's done on the CPU, and in SD's case, even moreso because the design of it prioritizes the GPU with its 15W limit on the APU. It forces the CPU to throttle down. You might ask why they use an NVMe if it's not taking full advantage of the speed. Answer: It's not because of speed they are using it.

Can't really claim you weren't talking about performance after pushing the idea of something being outdated, when microSD Express is a VERY recent thing. And you're asking why a console, a closed platform, has only one option to expand storage compared to other devices that are not consoles, where the additional option is something even the manufacturers recommend NOT messing with. As noted, it's not because of speed that the portable PCs are using NVMe, but because they are using them, that does allow them to be swapped. But you run the risk of messing with it. MicroSD (and Express) are simple enough for anyone to swap. Swapping out an NVMe of a portable PC is not nearly as straight-forward, especially when it can be covered by cables, other components, and when there's an active battery in the system.

Like, have you ever swapped the NVMe in a Steam Deck?

The thing SD cards are (still) pretty bad at is random access.
That will affect some games more than others, games which are constantly streaming assets may see reduced performance (lag spikes), and will likely experience increased pop-in and such. But since the Steam Deck is not that powerful, you're not using incredibly high res textures anyway.
The games they tested load in all the assets ahead of time. Those are not really the concern, you can deal with slightly increased load times and the performance itself is not affected. A well designed game will have the level assets packed together so that they can be loaded sequentially. But for games (especially open world) that stream assets and allow you to freely explore, this is not really an option. They're much more dependant on sufficiently fast storage since streaming in assets from slow storage can lead to lag spikes and worse.

Hardware Was Nintendo reasonable for only including 256GB internal storage?

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