Comment by gjsman-1000

Comment by gjsman-1000 2 days ago

6 replies

There's a very good reason for this: The whole OS is under 400MB. Every Nintendo Switch game cartridge comes with a full copy of the necessary OS on it.

Every game card is playable, no matter how out of date the Switch is, without any internet connection.

I'll take that kind of functionality before "surprise and delight." We might get "surprise and delight" this generation though, if in part because the change to a modified Samsung NAND over Macronix might be cheaper at larger capacities if rumors are correct.

Shared404 2 days ago

> Every game card is playable, no matter how out of date the Switch is, without any internet connection.

This is mostly accurate, but not entirely afaict. I had to connect my switch to wifi in order to update the OS to play Xenoblade 3 (or Tears of the Kingdom? It's been a while).

  • gjsman-1000 2 days ago

    Might be TOTK; I personally updated an offline Switch to use Sonic X Shadow Generations from the cartridge alone yesterday.

Dylan16807 2 days ago

400MB is huge, and cute touches can be very small.

  • gjsman-1000 2 days ago

    It's not that large considering the size of NVIDIA drivers + WebKit alone.

    By comparison, the Wii U with it's "nice touches" was over 5 GB.

    • Dylan16807 2 days ago

      The necessary OS for running the game doesn't need webkit, and I doubt the important part of the nvidia drivers is super big.

      • easton a day ago

        I would doubt they made a build of the OS without webkit, or else you’d have a OS without captive portal or eShop support. Feels annoying.