Hello everyone! The Nintendo Switch has been one of the best selling consoles in Nintendo’s history and as proof of that, even the anime guy here at The Outerhaven bought one! We here at The Outerhaven have enjoyed our Switches so much that we are continuing this series where we each take our turns describing the one thing we like about the switch.
In addition to the User Interface, which I think is the sleekest out of the big three home gaming consoles, I love the fact that Nintendo has switched back to cartridge-based games for their newest console. This was often talked about when flash memory started to grow exponentially. Back in the days of the NES, SNES and N64, flash memory was extremely small and expensive to manufacture. CDs became a cheaper alternative and when DVDs arrived, storage space and quality jumped up quite a bit. It only got better from there in the form of Blu-ray and HD DVD.
Now, flash memory is up in the terabytes in terms of storage. The Nintendo Switch supports up to 2TB Micro SD cards which, by the way, is four times more than a high density Blu-ray and eight times more than a standard Blu-ray. While the games carts themselves are not that big, it does mean that developers have the potential to actually work with 2TB of SD memory to create huge and immersive games on Nintendo Switch.
Plus, with flash memory, there is a significant reduction in load times for games. While they are not completely eliminated like they were in the olden golden days of gaming, they are quite a bit faster than a PS4 or Xbox One’s load time. Reading flash memory is always faster than waiting for a laser to read the data off of a disc.
Another good thing about using cartridges is the portability potential. It’s a lot easier to stick a bunch of flash cards into a carrying case (in fact, the one that comes with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Collector’s Edition holds twelve) than it is to lug around a ton of game cases or a CD binder.
The return to flash-based cartridges, I believe, is a very smart decision by Nintendo. Until game consoles can either come up with an insane amount of local storage or if the U.S. can upgrade everyone’s internet to support pure cloud-based storage, gaming and streaming, going fully digital (the logical next step in gaming) is still a ways off. Going back to cartridges seems like a logical temporary evolution and I’m glad Nintendo decided to go that route while the world gets itself in order.
By the way! The label tastes great on them! I recommend everyone give it a try!
Continue to check back each day as our staff continues to tell you just what it is we like about the Nintendo Switch!
