Storage crisis has led to Nintendo Switch 2 owners buying fewer games

A new report from Bloomberg has shed light on a new aspect of the current memory and storage crisis affecting the supply and prices of consumer tech, specifically flash storage. With NAND flash pricing expected to soar by up to 90% this quarter, this will affect the prices of the microSD Express cards required to expand the storage capacity of the Nintendo Switch 2.

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As the console ships with only 256GB of internal storage, storage expansion was already a concern before the console launched due to the move to the new (and more costly) microSD Express format. Unlike in the original Switch era, when affordable microSD cards were plentiful, microSD Express cards are much more expensive.

And with the current state of things, in Japan, microSD Express prices have already increased by around 30% since the console's launch, and that number will continue to rise. With storage for the Nintendo Switch 2 set to become much more expensive than on PC or the PlayStation 5, the adverse effect is that gamers will buy fewer games.

And with that, third-party developers might reconsider porting their games to the Switch 2 once game sales are affected by rising storage costs. The Bloomberg report includes a quote from an avid Tokyo-based gamer and Switch 2 fan who basically confirms that, when buying a new game, he now has to check how much storage it will take and whether it's a game he "really wants" to play.

One example includes Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on the Switch 2, which requires around 100GB of storage, which is around 40% of the 256GB of the Switch 2's internal storage capacity. Bloomberg's report draws a correlation between microSD Express prices and the Switch 2's lower 'games purchased per console' numbers compared to the original Switch. And it's a simple conclusion to come to. When games were cheaper and storage was inexpensive, people bought more games.

The good news is that Nintendo is seemingly aware of this problem, and in Japan, it sells its own brand of microSD Express cards "at roughly half the going market price." But even that isn't enough to close the gap between something you'd consider an impulse purchase versus something you'd take a minute or two to see if it's something you need.