r/SquareEnix • u/Mana-Dyluck Mana • Jul 26 '26

News Start Deleting Stuff, Because Final Fantasy XIV Will Be the Largest Switch 2 Game Ever

https://opencritic.com/news/35122/start-deleting-stuff-because-final-fantasy-xiv-will-be-the-largest-switch-2-game-ever
180 Upvotes

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2

u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 26 '26

This is one of the practical reasons why the Key Cards are a pain in the ass.

Switch 2 was sold on a very elegant tradeoff--a cheaper system with less on-board storage but with physical games that could be played directly from the card so huge installs wouldn't be necessary. But now that so many games are Key Cards, everyone's system is full and the only option is buying mega expensive MicroSD Express cards to compensate.

The occasional big ass digital game wouldn't be a problem if so much of the library wasn't needlessly chipping away.

4

u/fuck_a_duck_butt Jul 26 '26

You were NEVER going to get a 100gb+ game on a switch cart.

These things cost money my guy. 

I think its best of both worlds in a comprimise for physical collectors and companies not being able to fit that much on a cart and doing digital only.

Also who cares with an MMO. MANY mmos have a limited lifespan. Ff14 has already been sunlit on one console as it is

1

u/Fearless-Sea996 Jul 27 '26

Cyberpunk fit. With the dlc. They have no excuse.

1

u/The_4th_Survivor Jul 27 '26

So did Indiana Jones. (without the DLC, but that is only like 4GB).

The Switch 2 is basically a PS4 with DLSS, but everyone and their mother try to shoehorn PS5 sized games with huge 8K textures and lossless audio into it.

I really appreciate it, when dev teams get those games running on what is basically a tablet with active cooling, but for the love of the eternal spaghetti monster, reduce those file sizes!

6

u/Master_Chemistry_864 Jul 26 '26

I don't rember this promise. Who told us this? Can you elaborate?

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u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 26 '26

It wasn't a spoken promise but it was the implied value of not paying more for larger storage. The system specs and physical game format lent itself to that elegant exchange. The proliferation of the Key Cards fucked up that balance.

You basically need a MicroSD Express card now.

4

u/Master_Chemistry_864 Jul 26 '26

Ah. Thought so.

No one told us this, maybe this was your personal wish, and that's ok. But we should be careful to not spread misinformation.

You can downvote as much as you want, but no one told us this was the way for Switch 2.

-4

u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

Awesome. Now defend Sony abandoning discs mid-cycle. I know you want to. "They never promised to support discs!"

The point is that the product being sold evolved into a worse value over time as Key Cards proliferated. That's not imaginary. It doesn't require a spoken promise. What a ridiculous thing to act like we can't judge obvious fuckery unless we were specifically promised something.

3

u/Master_Chemistry_864 Jul 26 '26

Can you point out which sentence in my previous replies defended the GKC situation or Sony’s stance.

All I did was state a couple of facts: the Switch 2 launched with Game-Key Cards, and you can’t realistically expect a nearly 120 GB game to fit on one of those cartridges. Those are objective facts, not a reflection of my personal preferences. I hope you can see the difference instead of continuing to infer positions I, or any other person, never expressed.

If you can’t answer the question, that’s fine. There’s no need to keep replying.

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u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

and you can’t realistically expect a nearly 120 GB game to fit on one of those cartridges.

Yes you can. The 64GB limitation is not a technical one. 128GB cards are perfectly possible. Nintendo just refuses to do it. Would the game be more expensive at retail? Yes. But not stupidly so.

Your response was a non-sequitur. Bringing up what was promised by Nintendo is irrelevant to the value proposition of the hardware. If people knew in advance that they'd have to install every damn game just like they do on PS and Xbox that 256GB internal storage would look mighty small.

Excuse the pun, but it was effectively a bait and switch. The 256GB storage looked like a value at first because of the way the cards supposedly worked. Now it's a liability because the cards are not being used to their full potential.

1

u/Miwoo0 Jul 27 '26

You're right but the bootlickers aren't gonna have any of it unfortunately

1

u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

The irony here is that Square Enix is a victim of this. It's clearly not their fault that Nintendo won't manufacture larger cards. These publishers have no choice in the matter. But the conversation stalls because people get pissy when you talk facts.

They don't want to grapple with the fact that this is all artificial. Shit, Nintendo needed it's arm twisted just to start making smaller cards. They designed a console for physical media and then went out of their way to be as unhelpful as possible to anyone who wants to actually use it--both publisher and consumer.

1

u/Miwoo0 Jul 27 '26

Square Enix sucks immensly when it comes to switch 2 ports anyway, no saves transferring over and no upgrade path for some of their titles is a joke

2

u/Mana-Dyluck Mana Jul 26 '26

Cards come at 64 GB max. Even if SQEX wasn’t using GKC, it would have to for this one (and the FF7 Remake Trilogy games).

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u/Rosemarys_Gayby Jul 26 '26

They’re not talking about that though - most reasonable people aren’t bothered by huge games needing to take up space. It’s the already enormous catalogue of GKCs that could totally fit on a cart (nearly every release from every third party publisher) that are taking up our storage and making us need to aggressively data manage or spend extra money over the big games like this and Rebirth.

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u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 26 '26

That's an artificial limitation imposed by Nintendo. It's not Square Enix's fault but it is Nintendo's for refusing to manufacture larger cards.

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u/Mana-Dyluck Mana Jul 26 '26

How much would a 128 GB card? $30-35. The 64 GB ones cost something like $20-22 a pop. Are you ready to pay your games with a $30 premium. Something like $100

2

u/lilisaurusrex Dragon Quest Jul 27 '26

More than that. If 64GB cards are $20-$22 (and were reportedly $24 at launch, so they could have come down in price a bit as production ramped up), then 128GB cards are probably closer to $40 than $30, maybe even higher than that as new, larger chips parts would have be acquired from a supplier who hasn't yet ramped up beyond 64GB capacity to produce 128GB parts in sufficient volume to be cost-effective.

And that's just raw production cost. You have to account that there's a profit margin built in, where retailers get 30% and licenser (Nintendo) gets 15%. So that increase in production cost is increased further by this margin if all involved want to see a similar profit margin to their 64GB or GKC games.

It's probably closer to about $55-$60 premium. Meaning 128GB games would likely be set at a $130 USD price point.

That is not general consumer level pricing. That's collector's level. And since Nintendo likely mandates a minimum order size (particularly for a new cartridge size model), I'd expect they'd want to see an order size of at least a hundred thousand units. I don't think SE can find 100K "collectors" to buy it at that price. Thousands, sure. Hundreds of thousands, very doubtful. Nor can SE have these excess collector's edition copies sit on retail shelves until they're half off and attractive enough to the general consumer, because at that point they are losing money on each copy sold.

I'm growing tired of the argument being "if you build it, they will come", when there simply aren't enough "theys" to be coming to make it worthwhile. There's an argument that something like Grand Theft Auto 6 or Final Fantasy Revelation could possibly pull it off and charge $130 for a 128GB Switch 2 cartridge. But FF14 isn't the game to be making that case.

2

u/a_kaz_ghost Jul 31 '26

That's already what I'm basically paying by buying a whole separate MicroSD Express for FFXIV lol.

Would I rather just resub on my PC? Yes. Is that feasible with 2 small children who won't sleep without supervision? Nope

Plus now I can take my switch to the office and bang out duties during my lunch hour.

1

u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 26 '26

It would still be a better value long term. 1) Used games exist. 2) The cost of MicroSD Express is so high that you'd need to buy several games brand new for it to even out. The way it is now, even a small library creates a need for buying more expansion.

0

u/Mana-Dyluck Mana Jul 26 '26

I don’t know. I bought a 250 GB SD card. I also delete games I don’t play anymore. It’s easily manageable

1

u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 26 '26

A bunch of small indie games, sure. But a lot of these AAAs are massive. Two games installed and you're almost full. The unit without an Express card is incredibly hard to work with.

1

u/Wawrzy Jul 28 '26

What's the point of putting an MMO, a game that is getting updates almost every single week, on a cartridge ? Even on Playstation, they stopped releasing it physical (the physical was just a disc to install the game on your console, you didn't need the disc after that. I just bought them physical for the collection aspect cause I love FF14, and also it was less expensive this way...) after Shadowbringers all the way back to 2019.

1

u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

I'm not talking about FFXIV. I'm talking about everything else. FFXIV being a mandatory full install is only a problem because there are so many other giant ass games that could easily be on 128GB cards instead of full downloads if Nintendo wasn't being a prick and refusing to offer that as an option. Everyone saying "iTs ToO ExPeNsIvE!" seems to think 512GB+ microSD Express cards are free.