The Nintendo Change 2 is unbelievable—already a contender for the most important gaming {hardware} launch of 2025. I am nonetheless enjoying it day by day—monkeying round in Donkey Kong Bananza, having fun with tearing up its destructible sport worlds, whether or not I am enjoying on the large display screen or tucked up in mattress with handheld mode.
Sadly, simply two months on from launch, my console’s drive is already full. Since my copy of Bananza is digital, I’ve needed to begin juggling sport installs to expertise the nice ape’s newest journey. I am most likely an outlier in having maxed out capability already, however storage anxiousness is a matter that is prone to worsen for a lot of customers over the Change 2’s lifespan, and there do not look like any straightforward fixes on the horizon.
Storage Wars
{Photograph}: Julian Chokkattu
At a look, the Change 2’s storage scenario seems rosy. The console itself comes with 256 GB, which is eight occasions greater than the unique Change’s paltry 32 GB and 4 occasions the 64 GB of the Change OLED. System software program on Change 2 is impressively small, utilizing a smidge over 6 GB, leaving house owners with a generous-sounding ~249 GB. The issue is that 249 GB ain’t what it was once, and the Change 2 calls for you employ much more of that storage than the unique Change did.
The most recent technology of efficiency, equivalent to 4K HDR output, is important as Nintendo competes towards each house console rivals Sony and Microsoft, and the rising variety of handheld gaming PCs aiming for the Change’s transportable gaming crown. Nonetheless, enhancements imply greater installs for Change 2 native video games, consuming up increasingly more of that valuable area.
Whereas Nintendo has mastered getting huge outcomes from small sport sizes—open-world racer Mario Kart World is 24 GB digitally, whereas Donkey Kong Bananza clocks in at a mere 8.7 GB—different builders aren’t as trim. JRPG Bravely Default HD, a remaster of a Nintendo 3DS sport, eats up 11 GB (albeit probably right down to its important authentic mini video games that use the Change 2’s mouse mode controls), whereas co-op journey Break up Fiction calls for a staggering 69.2 GB—over 1 / 4 of the inner storage for that one sport alone.
In the event you suppose that seems like an incentive to embrace bodily media as a substitute, saving area for digital-only video games … effectively, you would be proper. Sadly, on Change 2, that is not the choice it as soon as was.
A Key Downside
{Photograph}: Julian Chokkattu
The problem is exacerbated by Nintendo’s introduction of GameKey Playing cards for some bodily video games. These do not have video games put in on them, merely a bearer token that permits customers to obtain a sport digitally whereas requiring the cartridge to be inserted to play it. Though on the time of writing, Nintendo itself hasn’t launched any of its first-party video games within the GameKey Card format, nearly each third-party sport launched for the Change 2 has opted for GKCs (Cyberpunk 2077 is a notable exception; your complete sport is on the cartridge).
