Report: Nintendo discontinues low-capacity game carts for Switch 2, now offers only two choices

Nintendo has removed all previous lower-capacity cartridges for the Switch 2 generation, sources tell Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki.

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Game developers releasing their titles onto Switch 2 have fewer options than the previous generation. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Nintendo has discontinued all Game Card sizes other than the higher-cost model for the Switch 2. Conversely, Nintendo had a wide array of Game Card sizes for the original Switch generation: 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB capacities (and not 64GB) were made available to developers.

For the Switch 2, Nintendo only offers two choices for physical game releases: the 64GB capacity Game Card, and the new digital-oriented Game-Key Cards. These selections come with their own unique and immediate trade-offs.

The higher-capacity Game Cards are more expensive but allow developers and publishers to potentially fit their entire game on the cartridge, like CD Projekt did with Cyberpunk 2077. The Game-Key Cards are cheaper, but more controversial among consumers because they are internet dependent and there's no actual data on the cartridge. The cartridges are "keys" that unlock access to a digital version of the game that has to be downloaded to play, similar to modern Xbox game discs.

This isn't the first time we've heard about this limited selection. Back in April, a physical media aficionado YouTuber mentioned that Nintendo was only offering a "smallish cartridge, or a full-fat 64GB cartridge, and nothing really in between" for the Switch 2 generation.

We've also seen some game developers publicly comment on this issue.

Marvelous USA CEO Ken Berry outlined the situation, saying that putting a full ROM on a Switch 2 cart "may not make financial sense" for games that sell for under $50. The economics of the Switch 2 carts come into play here heavily for smaller-scale developers and publishers.

"If our initial lineup sells well, and we can make a clear association with its success being tied to being a ROM offering, then that will greatly help our cause in the future. But it may still not make financial sense on smaller releases that have a price point under $50, such as an indie title being offered physically for $39.99 or less."

Other high-earning game studios like Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment say they avoided Switch 2's 64GB cartridge for performance reasons, saying that the Game Card simply didn't meet its requirements--micro SD Express or not. That's why Star Wars Outlaws shipped on a Game-Key Card instead of Ubisoft/Massive putting the entire game on a Game Card.