MrPopo wrote:The calculus is actually "do enough people have access to broadband?" and given the popularity of streaming platforms I think the answer is a resounding yes.
To be fair though, people don't actually need particularly fast broadband to cope with streaming, particularly if you're only dealing with 1080p. A lot of people are still stuck on slow enough internet though that can mean downloading a 40gb game can be a real pain in the ass and take an exhausting amount of time. My parents and brother's town, for example, are still stuck on ridiculously slow internet. I just upgraded to full fibre a few months back and get around 160mbps now, but even before I upgraded I was getting 40mbps on standard broadband. Meanwhile, 10 miles away where my parents and brother live, they're stuck on a pathetic 6-10mbps. They can cope with streaming, just about, but I have watched them trying to download patches at Christmas when I have bought my brother a Switch game and it's honestly painful to watch.
They still have a long way to get everyone in the world onto decent broadband speeds.
The other issue is that unlike the PS5 (and I presume Series X? I don't know, I don't have one), the Switch doesn't have much internal storage and upgrading is expensive (if you're going to get at least a 1TB SD card).
That said, it's pretty clear this is the direction we're going in and it won't be long until everyone is moved onto full fibre and physical video games become a thing of the past.
Ziggy587 wrote:I noted a few posts ago, the Arkham trilogy is similar. Only the first game, Asylum, is on the cart. The other two games need to be downloaded.
That's generally considered the least controversial way to handle games that are either too large to fit on a cartridge or simply the developers don't want to eat into their profits by using a larger capacity cartridge. You get an entire game on the cartridge, at least, whereas with the MGS Collection you essentially get nothing. There's 2GB of data, but you can't play anything or use it, you have to download the update if you want to play any of the games.
Ziggy587 wrote:Has this happen before with any Switch games? These are the first that I'm aware of.
It has been happening for years and is quite controversial in the Switch community. People usually give really large games a pass, it is the cases where publishers essentially opt for one of the smallest cartridge sizes available (usually a 1GB or 2GB one), simply to save as much money as possible, and then force you to download the rest of the data, even if the game isn't particularly storage heavy. It essentially makes the cartridge pointless. I think the Mega Man collections did it and one of them was only 6GB in size. a 8GB cartridge doesn't cost much to produce, but they went with a 1GB one anyways and forced you to download 5 gigabytes of data. Yet there are examples of 32GB cartridges, like The Witcher 3 and Dragon Quest Builders 2, that are complete and don't force the player to download any extra data just to play the game.
I think the LA Noire remaster and Doom were the first two examples, so it has been going on since not long after the Switch released.
To be fair, this isn't unique to Switch though. I bought Street Fighter 6 on PS5 and single player content like the World Tour mode and Arcade modes weren't on the disc and had to be downloaded separately. And that's a blu-ray disc, which is higher capacity and cheaper to produce than a Switch cartridge.
Edit:
marurun wrote:Fortunately they haven’t decided to lock the downloadables to an individual user.
Other than the odd few cases where they go with a download code instead of forcing a patch with the rest of the data. Sonic Origins Plus did that for some weird reason with the "plus" content. I guess because Sega hopes a large number of second hand copies that end up getting circulated gets them some extra income from people wanting to buy the "plus" content, but it's weird because Sonic Mania Plus had it all on the cartridge/disc.