Nintendo has released information on the size of its first wave of Switch 2 games.
The Nintendo Switch 2 console supports resolutions of up to 4K when docked, and recent experience has shown that games boasting higher fidelity visuals tend to have larger file sizes as a result.
This has been a concern for some players who have been worried that even though Switch 2’s storage is 256GB – eight times that of the original Switch – that may fill up quickly if the game sizes have increased at a similar rate.
Now the Japanese My Nintendo Store has started listing Switch 2 games ahead of the console’s release, along with each game’s file size, and it appears that players will be able to make do with the internal storage for a while before having to invest in a Micro SD Express card.
According to the store, Mario Kart World is Nintendo’s largest launch window game, but at 23.4GB it’s still only taking around 10% of the console’s total storage space (it’s unlikely the full 256GB will be available, as some will be used to store system files).
Donkey Kong Bananza is listed as a 10GB game, while Super Mario Party Jamboree: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition comes in at 7.7GB and Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Switch 2 Edition will be 5.7GB.
The Nintendo Classics: GameCube app, which will let players with a Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription download and play GameCube games, clocks in at just 3.5GB at launch. This makes sense, because there will be three games available on day one and each GameCube title originally released on 1.46GB discs (though rarely made use of the entire space). Naturally, then, the app will continue to grow roughly a gigabyte in size every time a new game is added.
At launch, the GameCube app will contain The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, F-Zero GX and SoulCalibur II.
One of the reasons Switch 2 games are relatively small in size compared to 4K titles on other systems may be the fact that the console supports Nvidia‘s DLSS technology.
The tech, which is often used for PC games, uses AI to upscale games to a higher resolution without a significant performance penalty, allowing Switch 2 to use lower resolution assets and have DLSS scale them up on the fly.
“Tensor Cores power AI-driven features like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), boosting resolution for sharper details without sacrificing image quality,” Nvidia said in a statement.
Nintendo Switch 2 will be released worldwide on Thursday, June 5.
