Nintendo hasn’t really spoken much about its plans to bring online-centric games to the Nintendo Switch console (if there are indeed any), but if it does, the console’s limited amount of digital storage space might pose a problem.
Obviously it would be great if purely digital games like World of Tanks were to become available on the Nintendo Switch since it would open up the game to an entirely new subset of players. However, if larger digital games such as MMO’s ever did come to the Switch, players would likely have to upgrade their console’s memory limits first.
Consider, for example, the upcoming title The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It was recently revealed that Breath of the Wild will take up 13.4GB of space on the Switch’s hard drive if purchased digitally, that’s nearly half of the entire console’s allotment for one single-player focused game. I’d imagine that a game like World of Tanks would take up just a bit more space than that (and by “a bit” I mean “a lot”).
While it is true that players can purchase and use microSD cards to expand the Switch’s amount of available memory, a microSD card with enough memory to hold a game like World of Tanks would likely be pretty expensive. This may be an unappealing prospect considering the console itself already costs $300, and that’s without any of its optional accessories or other games.
The silver lining to all this doom and gloom is that Nintendo could always find a way to expand the Switch’s base memory limits in the future, and that’s something it should definitely consider doing if it ever hopes to match Microsoft and Sony in the realm of online, digital-only games.
For more on the Nintendo Switch, be sure to read our coverage of last week’s Tokyo reveal event.