http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/2/14790702/nintendo-switch-game-saves-backup-sd-card

I dont see this talked about often enough and it seems like an issue worth mentioning. I own a Switch but I havent played any games on it yet and I was surprised to hear even if you own your games physically they cannot be saved to the cartridge and once its on the system or the microSD card it cannot be transferred at all. With no way to back up and no sort of cloud storage it gives you more reason to be extra careful with the Switch. The only reason I can imagine they did this was to stop homebrew. Why else would Nintendo be this restrictive and protective of your own data?

 

I dont understand this. Is there some sort of fingerprint detection that can tell you arent the original owner of the purchased content and it will restrict the access?

 

What else is new? So we gonna blame hackers for the reason why we can't backup data? No, i hope not. We have homebrew which is nice but still playstation can back up save data, at least on cloud with playstation plus. I assume that when the full online services are complete with subscription, backup save data on cloud will be possible. I mean they have pokemon bank so save data shouldn't be any different. Still is something the 3DS, WII U and switch should have from day one (Well 3ds can backup encrypted save data) but anyway is just possible that cloud saves will be planned for future.

Anyway, yeah, carts is Read only memory, sd cards are encrypted, what else is new? (Look at web browser exploits for systems) *See switch has no open access web browser app* Well there you go. Nintendo never been a fan of mods, hacks, or piracy so this is what happens. Can't say i'm siding with them on the no save backup thing, or hackers for potentially being responsible for them. I just thing is a mess and gonna get worst every new system until is all digital, and then no one will be happy. Video game crash repeat incoming

 

I didn't get my microsd in the mail yet, but I was wondering, is it possible to copy over the games and save data stored on the internal memory over to the SD card?

 

What about games like I said?

 

Well for one, the gamecube, wii, and wii u didn't save the data to the disk, obviously. So we haven't had that functionality in a very long time for Nintendo (and most) consoles. They switched back to carts for the obvious portability advantages as well as other things like being faster.

There isn't a whole lot of usefulness in saving to the cart anyway. Breath of the Wild for example, only allows 1 save. But it's 1 save per profile...if it saved to the cart, it'd be 1 save per cart. Noticeably worse.

Likely a lot of restrictions they do is obviously anti-piracy measures.

Thanks to the portability of the switch, there is very little practical use for being able to interact with your saves. I mean if you wanna play at a friends house who owns a switch, just bring your switch. You dock it in their dock and bam you're playing your stuff. It's actually a lot easier that way. It's slightly less convenient than just taking the cart, but like I said there are benefits to it not relying on the cart for savefiles too.
EDIT: of course the only downside is transferring consoles, which affects maybe 1% of Switch users or less. Plus Nintendo may have a way of doing that if you were to send it and it needed to be replaced anyway.

 

Multiple accounts are needed if you want multiple save files. So if say both you and your kid are both going to play breath of the wild and want separate save files. You will each need an account.

Multiple accounts are also useful if you have one Nintendo Switch but want to have games owned by separate individuals. Then say one kid turns 18 and buys his own switch... he only needs to deactivate his account on the old one and move it to the new one. Only his games will deactivate on the old switch and he can now move on with new switch in hand. Everyone else's games on the old switch stay intact.

 

wait wait wait...you can't transfer saves to an sd card though? i've tried

 

The games can be shared so I can only logically assume that the DLC for said games can be shared.

 

edit:nvm