Tag 4K

64GB Switch Carts Are Delayed? Alright Then

Sean Alexander

Allegedly, according to unnamed sources, the 64GB physical game storage cards for Nintendo Switch are delayed from mid 2018, to 2019. Let’s break down why this isn’t a big deal.

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So first off, you need to understand that 64GB cards would be a significant deal, if only because, as I have noted before, this would surpass the limit for physical media on PS4 and Xbox, as Blu-Rays only go to 50GB. At least we would hear the last of “The cards aren’t big enough”, right?!

So the sources state that some western publishers especially are displeased with this. I have to ask, just who that would be? It’s not EA, or Activision, that’s for sure, because to our knowledge they just gave up. It’s not likely to be Ubisoft, as their games come in usually well sized. So that leaves Bethesda, who has done a good job with deciding what to put on a cart, and 2K. I bet it’s 2K.

So L.A. Noire on Nintendo Switch is a big game. 27.4GB in fact. That *would* fit on a 32GB card, but as noted during the entirety of the Switch Tax debacle and as noted by developers, that’s too expensive to produce, so they opt for 16GB cards normally, like Skyrim and DOOM did. L.A Noire comes on an 8GB card. Yes, even cheaper than 16GB, and the rest of the game is a download. I would like to take this opportunity to point out yet again, this is the same situation on PS4 and Xbox One as well. 2K took the cheap route.

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Now one thing I want to know is just what Switch games will be upwards to 64GB? Certainly some will come in above 32GB yes, but most certainly not near 50GB or higher. That’s absurd even on PS4 and Xbox One, and when it does happen it’s because of 4K assets (Where files hit 100GBs!) or the game being 10-20GB over.

But any game from those systems being ported to Switch would have to be downgraded. If they aren’t the games wont run with the higher quality assets, the system can’t handle it. So lower quality, and most importantly smaller in size, assets will be used. This should, all things hopeful anyway, reduce the file size from the 50GBs. So this raises the question, what games would be above 50GBs on the system? Maybe two or three games as a bundle on one card, but not a single title, surely?

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But this leads to another point. Most publishers right now, as shown with 2K, Bethesda, and more, find 32GBs too expensive t use, settling for 16GB, or foolishly 8GB. Now in the case of 16GB often they don’t actually need to go higher, such as with Skyrim, but sometimes stretching for 32GB would be fine.

But the publishers are so allergic to the notion of 32GB cards at their current price, that it makes the mind go wild over just why they would be upset over the notion of a bigger, much more expensive card not being ready yet, when they won’t shell out for what IS a cheaper card comparatively, even at the current price! Why are they upset if they won’t use 32GB with places stating “cost” is the reason. This just doesn’t add up.

 

Of course there is the belief that the introduction of a 64GB card will drive down prices of the others, and this isn’t strictly true. What will drive down the price is the manufacturing process getting cheaper and the Flash NAND chip shortage as noted by Toshiba being in part due to smart phones, ending. If the cost to make them falls, the cost to buy them will too. If you start making a newer, bigger, more expensive card, it doesn’t suddenly make the smaller ones cheaper.

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But this all ties in to my last article on the matter of physical media not evolving. Sony and Microsoft are stuck with 50GB Blu-Rays and those can’t hold the games at 4k resolutions they are so desperately chasing. It’s been 11 years since Blu-Ray was used for games, surely by now they should be on to UHD Blu-Ray? Problem is cost. That’s expensive, so they won’t. But it’s funny that in a year or two, the Nintendo Switch will be outpacing what they can store in a disc, in a tiny little cartridge.

As I said before, physical media needs to catch up, and it looks like it has if these 64GB cards are anything to go by. All we need is the shortage to end, and the prices to fall, and Blu-Ray will be outdated for everything except 4K assets. Even then, who knows right?

 

Thanks for reading, and if you liked this article give it a share on social media, and I will see you next time. Until then, Happy Gaming!

Games and Accessibility: Don’t Leave Us Out

Sean Alexander

My past year in gaming has highlighted things that really should be addressed in games more often.

 

So fun fact: I have severe deuteranopia. This means some shades of red/green/brown (Anything in that range) can look identical. This means the colour spectrum I see is far more limited.

 

So on a 4K TV you have many more pixels, many more instances of colour, but with how little colour range I have, it can mean that a lot of those pixels look the same. The same is true for 1080p, or even 240p. But the more pixels there are, the more there is for my eyes to confuse.

In the image below, its actual the SDR image where I get better detail:

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Add in HDR and well, we have a mess. The increased colour range of the display is nice, assuming you can distinguish them all. If you can’t, that’s just more shades of red and green to mix in with the others you can’t distinguish. And no, this isn’t me against the notion of 4K.

 

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I didn’t know I was colour vision deficient for 19 years of my life, but in 2016 I got my hands on DOOM. Great game, by the way. This was relatively smooth sailing, until the 4th stage, which was in Hell. A lot of red and brown. Red mists, rocks, particles, red enemies, brown objects, you guessed it, it was like looking at a blob on the screen.

Thankfully, there is a mode for each form of colour deficiency, so I got a lovely, what the press termed it before release, “Piss filter” instead. But everything is far more visible, and I am no longer walking off of ledges because I can’t see the end for the other objects in the distance. I am no longer missing my shots, or my jumps.

But if the game, like so many sadly, didn’t have this feature? I couldn’t beat it. I have tried, even with my memory of the game, I can’t do it. Some games I find impossible to play. If Overwatch didn’t have colour blind options, I couldn’t tell who was on what team unless they hit me.

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But this higher resolution, wider colour range thing is what Microsoft, Sony and PC are pushing towards. Bigger screens, more colour…and not having the colour blind modes so people like me can play the game without either straining, or just having to give up. A lot of games simply don’t feature them, and there are games I want to try, but can’t.

Plus in marketing, taking DOOM again, I wanted to see how the Nintendo Switch version looked compared to my PS4 version. The catch was, no colour blind footage. So I had no way to tell how low the game looked to my eyes.

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And of course, this is not just to mention my article on the sheer importance of controls. Take 1-2 Switch, a game I will never talk about again most likely, that can be played by the hard of sight due to relying on sound and haptic feedback for a lot of games. That is a huge deal!

But a lot of games don’t account for the fact that this is a thing. Sure, you can’t make a controller that works in every situation, but occasionally you get a Rhythm Heaven or 1-2 Switch for the hard of sight, you get a colour blind mode for someone like me, you develop ways to make games more accessible, some far simpler than others.

 

Ultimately, I’d like to see even the basic modes be implemented into future games, since while the tech pushes on and on and creates more impressive visuals, with each passing year people like myself are left further and further behind, and some have been left already. In the world of gaming, that is just upsetting to see. We are all gamers, and we should all be able to play.

 

As always if you enjoyed this article give it a share and leave your thoughts below, and I will see you next time! Until then, Happy Gaming!

Physical Games Media: Time To Catch Up

Sean Alexander

Physical storage media for games that you buy from a brick and mortar store is under fire, mostly on Nintendo Switch due to downloading the remainder of big games that don’t fit, or cheaper developers skimping on costs, but this is the case on all systems.

 

So what spurred this? Well two things. One is Resident Evil Revelations Collection news a few days ago, where Capcom Europe announced that again, like usual, they won’t have a physical run of the game in the EU due to costs. These costs involve paying PEGI and other ratings boards, shipping, distribution, localisation, it’s a bit of a mess to be fair. But even in other regions (Except Japan allegedly), the two games come as such: 1 on a card (The smaller game I might add) and the 2nd game as a download code.

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This isn’t uncommon. The “Switch Tax” as it has become known is just a laundry list of third-party games that cost more on Nintendo Switch, attributed to cartridge costs. L.A. Noire, RiME, the list goes on. Is this entirely true? Not…really? Without official figures on costs we will likely never know, but one idea is that it is simply just price gauging a new market, which is normal. But the inclusion of goodies like OST keys and pins in physical editions shows developers and publishers (Indies, typically) want to sweeten the deal for physical buyers to offset that price.

The next issue with the game cards is actually publishers like Take Two, who have released LA Noire, NBA 2K18 and WWE 2K18 on the horizon. Each game is “Playable” without downloading the remainder, but there has been widespread panning of this move, instead with people preferring to pay a little premium and have the whole experience on a 32GB card, as opposed to what is right now, a 4GB or 8GB card, with the rest as a download.

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In the case of something like DOOM, this is handled quite well. The game fits all single player and DLC content on the card (16GB) and offers all the multiplayer as a download. This way you don’t miss any of the “Main event”. With Take Two though, it’s been revealed that the backlash against the Switch copy being only “Partly physical” should also be levelled at the other editions.

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On PS4 and Xbox One you use Blu-Ray discs, that hold up to 50GB of data. Most games fit on this, and L.A. Noire most certainly would. However, interestingly enough that game actually only has a small amount on the disc, the rest as a download. This is a mirror of what happens on Switch. Why? Simple: It’s cheaper. While full capacity Blu-Ray discs are cheaper than the 32GB cards on Switch, publishers, as noted by Take Two saying the following, want “Maximum Profits”:

“We’ve said that we aim to have recurrent consumer spending opportunities for every title that we put out at this company. It may not always be an online model, it probably won’t always be a virtual currency model, but there will be some ability to engage in an ongoing basis with our titles after release across the board,”

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The truth is the digital storefronts of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network offer something physical games don’t: More money per sale. The prices are often the same regardless, but one of them won’t factor in costs of production, shipping, retailer cuts and so on. On PS4 and Xbox One this model of Digital Only is being pushed heavily, as both systems, even if using discs, just install them to the hard drive anyway, making the disc just a form of DRM and to save you downloading all of a game, instead (In this case anyway) most of it.

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So what does this mean? Well your internal storage is being eaten up anyway, why not just go digital and be more convenient on yourself (Until the game gets pulled from the store…) and you can even get those Digital Gold Editions publishers like so much. In the end, more money for them. Take Two is the most brazen with this, as their games come piece meal regardless of format.

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But sticking with Xbox One for a moment, let’s loop back to the complaint you have to download most of these third-party Switch games to get the full and best experience (OR complete experience) even when you buy physically.

The Xbox One X recently launched, and with it comes the ability to use actual UHD (4K) assets, which I assume (I haven’t got one of the boxes, I’m not rich!) look amazing. The problem with these are the file sizes are enormous, with HALO 5 and Forza Motorsport 7 passing 90GB to 100GBs each! Final Fantasy XV on PC is 170GBs, so that won’t fit on ANY current disc.

The catch here is to fully utilise your new shiny console, to get the best experience you can, you will have to download a good 50GB of game, or more heaven forbid. Why? The games have to come on standard Blu-Ray because they ALSO need to work on the basic Xbox One and One S. So what does this mean? These huge games require downloads, because the storage medium can’t hold them.

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To confound this issue further, there IS a storage medium that COULD hold them. UHD Blu-ray. They go up to 100GBs. In fact, looking at how long regular Blu-Ray has been used for gaming (Since 2006 with the PS3), one would expect UHD Blu-Ray would be used by now, but an issue there would be cost. At which point no matter which option you take, you have the same issue as you do on Nintendo Switch: Games are too big for the medium flat-out, or the medium is too costly to use to store a full game. Sure it’s a little different, where the devices don’t even support UHD Blu-Ray (Well, the Xbox One S and X do for movies…) but the problem even then still persists when some games on the basic PS4 and Xbox One go over GB anyway!

 

The third-party publishers want a digital only future. Consumers are leaning to it from convenience. Console makers can’t keep up with the scope of games due to costs. A digital only future is most likely coming down the line. Physical media is already outdated on PS4 and Xbox One, skipped out on with all systems by publishers wanting to save costs, and too expensive on Switch and for UHD to hold the games being made in their entirety.

Let’s just hope they include bigger hard drives in the next ones right? 1TB in the Xbox One X…eesh.

 

As always if you enjoyed this give a like and share on social media, and I will see you next time! Happy Gaming!