Hyrule has never been this big — 'Breath of the Wild' download size may cause frustration

By Steven Petite Published January 17, 2017

Gamers accustomed to purchasing games digitally will more than likely need to rethink this approach with the Nintendo Switch. The digital version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, for example, will take up 13.4 GB, according to Nintendo’s Japanese site.

The space required for Breath of the Wild amounts to more than 40 percent of the Switch’s 32GB internal storage. In reality, though, the percentage is undoubtedly higher. The Wii U shipped with a marketed 32 GB drive, but after formatting (3 GB), and minus the space taken up by the operating system (4.2 GB), the console had roughly 25 GB remaining to store games, files, and other applications.

Recommended Videos

We don’t currently know the size of the Switch’s operating system, but when you finish setting up the console, expect the available space to be less than 32 GB.

This is likely to cause headaches for players who have transitioned to downloading a large percentage of their games on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The Switch’s storage can be expanded with a MicroSDXC card. Theoretically, this means the storage can expand to the highest capacity card currently available at retail (512 GB). The price of a 512 GB card, however, is more than the cost of the console itself. Even 256 GB cards regularly go for more than $100. A 128 GB card is the more realistic option, but even then, the system will be full after roughly a dozen Breath of the Wild-sized downloads.

It is important to note, however, that Breath of the Wild will likely be one of the largest file sizes at launch and beyon.

For proponents of physical media, the Switch will be a great console. It’s Nintendo’s first home console since the Nintendo 64 to use cartridge-based physical games. This format will mitigate the need for the type of hefty physical game installs seen on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Still, there are concerns that game patches will nibble away at storage space, even for those who exclusively purchase physical Switch games.

We can only hope that Switch games will release in full working order, and that prices for high-capacity MicroSD cards drop in the near future.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Steven is a writer from Northeast Ohio currently based in Louisiana. He writes about video games and books, and consumes…

Gaming

Does Tears of the Kingdom have traditional Zelda dungeons?

Link stands in front of a large stone structure in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Before The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's launch, there was one question that fans kept asking: Would the sequel bring back traditional Zelda dungeons? That was something that was sorely lacking from Breath of the Wild, which replaced them with Divine Beasts. These were technically dungeons, but ones that were much smaller in scope and revolved around specific puzzling.

Nintendo would alleviate some fears days ahead of its launch by confirming that more familiar dungeons return for the sequel, but we weren't given a full idea of what that would entail. All we knew is that they'd be bigger and be themed. So, does Tears of the Kingdom actually usher in the return of classic Zelda dungeons? It's complicated. The answer is firmly between yes and no, depending on your definition of "traditional."
What are traditional Zelda dungeons?
Let's answer a tricky question first: What do we even mean when we say "traditional Zelda dungeon." That question will net you very different answers depending on who you ask. When I conducted an informal poll on the subject on social media, I found that no two answers were exactly alike. For some, it was just about scale and theme. For others, it was more about using specific items to gradually open up a space.

Gaming

5 big details from Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s new trailer that you may have missed

Link stands near allied humans and Gorons in Tears of the Kingdom.

The final trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has arrived, and it's full of new information about the upcoming Switch game. We got a better look at its open world, saw many new characters, and got another peek at all kinds of vehicles that players can make. In fact, the trailer was so crowded with new information -- and Tears of the Kingdom's mechanics and story are still so shrouded in mystery -- that there are some things that you might have missed, leaving a ton to speculate on.
When watching it again, we found a ton of curious details that had us wondering about unannounced features. We've rounded up five details in particular that could have some major implications for the gameplay and story of Tears of the Kingdom.
Link has companions

One of the most surprising things about this new trailer is that it seems to confirm a companion system, or at least NPCs that are way more active than they ever were in Breath of the Wild. During a montage around the 1:38 mark, we see Link riding a horse through an active battle between humans and Ganondorf's forces. Later on, after the three-minute mark, we see new Rito, Human, Zora, Goron, and Garudo working with Link. The Zora soldier specifically helps Link fight an enemy in a two-on-one encounter.
Companions aren't a new feature to open-world games; titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have it. Still, these more active NPCs and an entire potential companion mechanic highlight just how deeply core gameplay systems have been modified for Tears of the Kingdom.
New characters and enemies

Gaming

Don’t expect Zelda’s $70 price to become the new Switch standard, says Nintendo

Link looks at his hand in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years.
While Nintendo will release Tears of Kingdom at $70, a spokesperson for the company tells Digital Trends that this will not always be the case for its first-party games going forward.
"No," the spokesperson said when Digital Trends asked if this is a new standard. "We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis."
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #2
To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
The price is right
Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision?
Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened.