Nintendo 64! WD to manufacture official 64/128GB SD cards

Nintendo Switch fans can break free from their 32GB shackles and bask in twice or even four times as much space. The big N is partnering with Western Digital to market Nintendo-licensed 64GB and 128GB microSDXC cards. The cards will feature both Nintendo and SanDisk logos.

A larger memory card is an essential buy for serious Switch owners. There are plenty of non-Nintendo cards available for decent prices, here’s one our good friend Matthew Hayes uses for his. For customers that want to keep the Nintendo seal of approval however, they’ll be able to sleep easy at night.

Future

So far, most Switch games have been under the 32GB size currently offered by the Switch’s internal solid state drive. Although it’s unlikely Nintendo would produce a 1st-party game over 32GB for quite some time, we could see third-party ports crack the limit sooner or later. Not dealing with 4K textures means we won’t be seeing 100GB installs like a few recent Windows/Xbox titles, but ports of high-end games will likely not be as compact as a Nintendo title made exclusively for their Switch.

IGN reported the cover art of NBA2K18 sporting a “internet download and microSD card required” label.

Many thought this meant the install size was higher than 32GB but that turned out to not be the case. In fact, 2K is publishing NBA2K18 on smaller-capacity cards to save production costs.

This is similar to third-parties publishing for cartridge-based consoles (N64, Genesis etc) as higher-capacity carts were considerably more expensive to manufacture. Sony’s Playstation lured many game publishers to their side of the fence due to how much cheaper CDs were to produce compared to cartridges. CDs could also hold over 650MB while carts ranged from 4MB to 32MB (RE2 and Conkers Bad Fur Day were 64MB).

The Nintendo/Sandisk licensed SD cards will be in ‘select’ retail stores this October.