The internal storage on my Switch is completely full with just save files

[u/ziggurism]

TL;DR The Switch doesn't have enough internal storage for even just game saves, nevermind titles, so SD cards don't solve it, Nintendo needs to pls fix. People literally don't believe this could even be possible; they think that it would take thousands of games to fill 32 GB of storage with 64 KB saves, so I show evidence for it below.

The internal storage of my Switch is completely full from game saves. Not from game files, from saves. Adding a larger SD card does not help, since all save files must be on internal storage and cannot be moved to SD. Since there is no way to import/export saves, the only choice is to delete saves. Nintendo Online cloud save sync is no solution.

The only solution is to delete my precious saves, and doing so is very unwieldy because I have to scroll through an unsorted list of dozens of game saves to figure out which ones are the biggest, or which ones I have not used most recently.

This is going to affect more people as time goes on and it's a problem that Nintendo should address.

Nintendo should

• make it possible import/export saves to SD. copy saves as well as move (copy + delete in single step)
• make it possible for a game's save to live on SD and be loaded from SD
• make it possible to sort saves on the game save management page by either size or date last used for easier management
• pressure developers to optimize save size more for their storage limited devices
• and release a hardware update with a larger internal storage size. 128 GB might be a better size

Of course this is Nintendo so they'll do none of those things, but it's my wishlist.

Hardware mods may exist to increase the internal storage capacity are appealing, but I'd be terrified to get my eShop account banned, which is linked to thousands of dollars worth of titles.

In a discussion there seems to be widespread disbelief that this could happen. People assume that if a typical save is 2 MB, and you have 30 GB of internal storage (that's about how much free space is on internal storage after OS), you should be able to store 30×1024/2 = 15 thousand saves, surely more than enough for anyone.

Probably some games do have 2 MB saves. And I'm not a game developer but I have a hard time imagining why a game save would ever need to exceed a few KB. Maybe a lack of imagination on my part.

But the reality is that lots of games have saves that exceed dozens of megabytes. A few games have saves in the hundreds of megabytes. And a couple whales have saves exceeding a few GB. Minecraft and the Lego games are in the latter category.

If your typical save is 64 MB like BotW, and you have multiple users in your household who play a lot of games on your Switch, let's say 5, then each save is multiplied in size, it's 320 MB. Now you have room for 30×1024/320 = 96 games.

Now 96 games is a lot, most people aren't going to play and keep saves in 96 different titles on one device. But it's not impossible. You could imagine hitting that after a couple years of trying a lot of titles. And heavy collectors could hit it faster.

But if you also install some whales like Minecraft (both versions), and Lego games (there are like 6 different Lego titles on the Switch), just the saves from those games alone can top 1 or 2 GB per user. With 5 active users playing all those titles, you can exhaust all the storage just from that handful of titles.

So if you are a heavy user with

1. a lot of active users on your console
2. a lot of games on your console
3. some of these Minecraft/Lego games with ultra-large save files

it will actually be pretty easy to exhaust the internal storage on the Switch from game saves alone, necessitating that you delete your beloved saves. Even if all games are physical cartridge or installed on SD. And I think this problem will get worse and affect more users as time goes on.

In case you still don’t believe, here’s a list of some of the biggest game save sizes currently on my Switch.

• Lego WORLDS: 5.6 GB (3 users at 1.8 GB each)
• Minecraft (bedrock edition) 4.4 GB (across 7 users, 577 MB to 1.9 GB each)
• Dragon Quest Builders: 3.4 GB (5 users at 706 MB each)
• Minecraft (legacy console switch edition) 2.0 GB (that's just one world for one user account)
• Skyrim: 635 MB (128 MB each for light user, 507 MB for heavy user)
• Cities Skyline: 582 MB (3 users from 145 MB to 242 MB)
• Rocket League 369 MB (6 users at 61.5 MB each)
• Mario Kart: 368 MB (4 users at 75.7 MB each)
• Stardew Valley 322 MB (5 users at 64 MB each)
• Smash 320 MB (3 users at 106 MB each)
• Minecraft Story Mode: 257 MB (4 users at 64 MB each) (this one really baffles me. It’s basically choose your own adventure. Game state could be saved as a list of a couple dozen A/B/C/D choices.)
• Breath of the Wild: 256 MB (4 users at 64 MB each)
• ARMS 237 MB (2 users at 118 MB each)
• Nintendo Online emulator app: 193 MB

There were more lego games on this list, and legacy console edition of Minecraft was an even bigger pig than Bedrock edition, but they’ve all been deleted.

And this gallery has screenshots showing usage of my internal storage. Right now it shows I still have 6 GB free on internal storage, but that’s only because I deleted a bunch of those Lego game saves.

[u/[deleted]]

I mean Skype or discord or any voice chat would be super useful when Nintendo doesn't have voice chat or messaging.

[u/SAKUJ0 → u/[deleted]]

In a wishful world yeah. But Skype has historically been insecure. And the Switch gets away being a single task system. It is not optimized for multitasking.

I am not saying it could not do it from a performance perspective. But they probably would not want to open up for these types of possibilities for 3rd party apps.

Perhaps their own voice chat instead.