The OEM cost for a 25GB (single layer) Bluray disk is in the region of one dollar (USD) and about 50% to 80% more for a 50GB (dual-layer) Bluray disk.

Note: The following are eBay (US) prices for the public https://www.ebay.com/b/Verb... manufacturers will pay considerably less.

Most games for the PS4 and XB1 will either fit on a 25GB or 50GB Bluray disk and any additional content such as patches and DLC will have to be downloaded. Even if the game came on Bluray it will always have to be loaded onto your storage device be it hard or solid state disk. There are no games for the PS4 or XB1 that are played from Bluray disk.

Like it or not this same method will be applied to the Nintendo Switch and while it is possible to play a game from the cartridge (ie. MicroSD card) any additional download will have to go to the internal storage since all MicroSD cards for the Switch will be read-only and can not be updated. This is a huge problem since only 26GB of the internal memory of the Switch is usable for games.

The following are games that will require additional download storage.
Doom. http://www.nintendolife.com...

NBA 2K18. http://www.nintendo.com/gam...

Note: The above was from Nintendo's own site.

If you only download Indies or games that are small to begin with and rarely if ever need updates then 26GB of internal storage may not be an issue. Like it or not if you wish to play AAA games then 26G of internal storage is tiny.

Basically, if games like Doom or NBA 2K18 don't sell well then you are going to see AAA developers drop support for the Switch.

BTW. I have no idea about Skyrim (yet) although it will have the three DLC packages and if you require internal storage then there will be a problem. http://www.nintendo.com/gam...

I highly doubt that 64GB carts will take that long to be available, honestly. I believe that the 3DS's maximum cart size when it launched was 2GB, but was pushed up to 8GB long before the end of it's life. Hopefully the cost does come down soon though. The lower the cost the better for third parties and customers.

@Theknightofnights,

Dang, I didn't know the 3DS's cart sizes increased so fast. Either way I was saying both available and affordable. Considering some devs area already staying away from the larger cart sizes due to cost, even if 64gb is available in two years or so it could be another year or two after that before they're affordable for third party devs to use them without worrying about the added costs (compared to Blu-Ray disks).

Microsoft and Sony's next consoles, if they stick with Bluray, likely won't have disks that support much more than 64gb. On top of that most games will probably have 4K textures and games could easily be substantially shrunk for Switch version by simply compressing textures. So as long as 64gb cartridges become a thing the Switch will be fine until the end of its life.

Bluray disks are very cheap in OEM quantities (about a dollar USD for 25G) compared to say a 16GB or 32GB MicroSD card and one very import factor to consider is that hard disk drives have a performance about on par with a MicroSD card and as far as cost per gigabyte there is no contest.

You could even look at solid state disks which can easily be installed internally in the PS4 or externally for both the PS4 and XB1 are still considerably cheaper (cost per gigabyte) than MicroSD cards and on average have five or more times the performance.

Note. No game for the PS4 or XB1 is made to be played directly from the Bluray drive, instead the game, all patches and DLC are installed onto the internal or external storage

BTW. It is not the size of the MicroSD card that is the problem it is the internal storage (about 26GB usable). Take a look at Nintendo's website for Doom and NBA 2K 18 storage requirements or the links I have provided in my earlier posts.

I agree. Good read.

If weaker Hardware was not enough to getting third party to not come over this expensive format definitely is going to keep them away.

You forgot the 64gb that was available by release of the switch.

@EDMIX - pros and cons to cartridges. Load times are so much faster than optical discs. Great news is the format gets cheaper as time goes on. No amount of time is going to speed up a bluray drive.

Smokinggunz never said they should compress games purely for the Switch versions of games, he just said that developers in general have gotten lazy with compression.

You are talking as if compression would take thousands of dollar to do.

Thank you, developers are not lazy. Executives are cheap though. They are usually the reason you see a game that is half done. Don't want to spend the time(which=pay money+ more) to make a polished product. I'm a business developer I make 6 figures. Most game developers (not executive level) dont make that much and they work their a** off. More power to them!

Sometimes developers is used to refer to the developing company as a whole rather than the individual people that are making the game. Still, I wouldn't say developers are are particularly lazy. It's just that with all the deadlines and everything set by publishers a lot of developers obviously aren't going to put compression very high on the list of priorities. Game development is also so large nowadays that compressing a massive game after it's already put together is a huge task to tackle.