In theory it makes sense but in the past buying digitally as opposed to physically hasn’t netted anyone any savings. And with the new system where the card doesn’t even hold the actual game, it’s an even worse offering.
Comment on Switch 2 vs Steam Deck: the Cyberpunk 2077 face-off
malwieder@feddit.org 3 weeks agoWell, at least for the physical edition, they have to account for the cost of the 64 GB game card they are using. Wasn’t that rumored to cost like $16 a piece?
Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
malwieder@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Cyberpunk is on a 64 GB card that holds the entire game.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Buying on PC is a lot cheaper than buying on consoles typically, especially after a year or two, and PC sales are mostly (all?) digital now.
And the thing about cartridges not holding the game is limited to specific games, devs still have the option of putting the full game on a cartridge instead of the license option. All that happened here is that devs got another option on how to sell their game, so if you want to gift someone a digital game but want a physical item to give to them, the license on cartridge option is perfect, and AFAIK it preserves the ability to resell the game (may be dependent on the game though).
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I highly doubt it costs that much. You can buy 64GB SD cards for ~$10 retail, which includes:
If each step is something like 50% markup (not unheard of), the cost to actually get these things from a factory is probably about $2. Make it a bit more expensive because the packaging is unique to Nintendo, and their quantities are probably a bit less than regular retail SD cards, so maybe it’s like $5 per card.
That’s a lot more than an optical disk, which are probably under $1, but nothing too crazy.
I have no special insight here, just some general understanding of how retail works.
malwieder@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
There isn’t official pricing nor reliable sources out there so I’m going by rumors.
With your calculation you have to keep in mind that the Switch 2 cards have to somewhat match microSD Express speeds, so a more accurate comparison would be these, but they aren’t available in 64 GB sizes.
All I’ve heard is that they’re expensive and with the larger sizes often required for Switch 2 games it’s an even bigger problem than with Switch (1). These key cards exist for a reason. And I’d bet Nintendo takes a margin on these instead of only requiring the publisher to cover the manufacturing costs.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yeah, I assume the key cards have a bit of margin, but they probably need to keep margins low on 64GB cards or devs won’t bother, and physical media does have value for Nintendo’s target market.