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While it should be no surprise to dedicated Switch users who favor physical media over digital, L.A Noire will cost $10 more than the PS4 and Xbox One iterations. Many have voiced their displeasure over what Nintendo Life has appropriately dub “Switch tax” where the cost of the Nintendo Switch game carts falls mostly under the consumers rather than the developer. In other words, rather than having the developer take the financial hit, consumers are paying for the manufacturing cost. L.A Noire isn’t the only major title that has fallen under the switch tax. Games like “The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+” and “Resident Evil Revelations” 1 and 2 come to mind under this practice.
Capcom Unity has confirmed that both Resident Evil Revelations 1 & 2 will be arriving on the Nintendo Switch in November 28th, 2017. The Resident Evil Revelations Collection will cost you $39.99 and the first game, Resident Evil Revelations will be on a game card where as the second game will a downloadable only via voucher. Both games can also be digitally downloaded separately for $19.99.
The first game, Resident Evil Revelations file size is 13 GB while the downloadable Revelations 2 will take up an outstanding 26 GB, thus making an external micro SD card mandatory. Keep in mind that the maximum size that the Nintendo Switch cards can hold is 32 GB. It’s 7 gigs over what the high capacity switch cards can hold. If a developer requested a higher-capacity switch card they could but generally speaking, but not all developers are willing to do that and in order to get around that, they skip the physical media and simply use digital distribution.
Nintendo switch cards are expensive to manufacture. Depending on the file size of the game, manufacturing those Nintendo cards cost between $10 to $20. Developers either decide to place the cost of those cards onto us, the consumers or, that means they take a hit. Not all developers can afford it expecially indepent developers. Though you could definitely argue that many major developers could afford it, that’s not always going to be the case.
Developers will often than not choose digital over physical which can be disappointing for fans of physical media. the importance of always having a game in physical form and the idea of physical media in games is becoming more of an option rather than a requirement. As SD cards become higher capacity and cheaper per gigabyte. Games will slowly gravitate toward the digital frontier.
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