New Nintendo Switch Branded SD Cards Cost 3X More Than Normal Ones

Megalith

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
Hori is meeting the demands of Nintendo fans who want the company name on anything and everything. The problem is that a 32GB Switch-branded SD card will run you about $50 more than your typical Sandisk, Lexar, or Samsung variety, going off the pricing information on Amazon.co.jp. If you’re going to charge me that much, you could at least release a green or pink version with Yoshi or Peach on it. What’s your opinion on branded storage, anyway? Another one I can think of is Seagate’s green Game Drive for Xbox—why not just get a matching black (or white) one?

…Nintendo has partnered with HORI for “official” Switch-branded 16 GB and 32 GB SD cards. While it may be logical that Nintendo would sell official cards (these are for the Japanese launch, but there may end up being Western equivalents) the problem is in the price. The 32 GB card is ¥7,900, or about $70 USD. But on Amazon, the “high end” 32 GB SD card from Sandisk is ¥2,690, or about $23 USD. Past that, if you want a cheaper version with the same amount of storage (but with slower read/write speed perhaps), you can find one for as little as ¥1,180/$10. All of this is to say that it is probably not the smart play to purchase the officially branded SD cards because of this rather severe price mark-up. Paying three times as much as necessary just to get the official Nintendo seal of approval isn’t worth it, and I’m not sure why the price point is what it is here. Keep in mind these are not proprietary memory cards like what we’ve seen with Sony handhelds. Any SD card will work in a Switch.
 
Last edited:
Sold out everywhere pre-orders I bet they won't even meet the Demand at Christmas time.
This system is a very hip system I bet they Hype is comparable to the Wii or maybe tne Nintendo 64
not the NES or SNES though.
 
That is par for course with other consoles. The Microsoft Xbox 360 HD was over priced as was the Sony stuff. At least they aren't required but instead you can use any SD card.
 
Exavior said:
That is par for course with other consoles. The Microsoft Xbox 360 HD was over priced as was the Sony stuff. At least they aren't required but instead you can use any SD card.
Click to expand...

This is the saving grace. If it was locked to only the branded SD cards, that would be an utter disaster.
 
Due to storage demands, I am guessing physical sales are still going to be the main way to buy games for the Switch. The new Zelda game will be 13.4 gigs, so that is almost half of the Switch's storage right there (we still don't know how much of the 32 gigs on the Switch will be usable). If that continues, you will only be able to have 2-3 games installed on your Switch at a time if you use the digital store front. Sure 64 a Micro-SD HC card is only $20ish right now, but that all adds up if you are having to get one for every four games you download.
 
Shmee said:
Due to storage demands, I am guessing physical sales are still going to be the main way to buy games for the Switch. The new Zelda game will be 13.4 gigs, so that is almost half of the Switch's storage right there (we still don't know how much of the 32 gigs on the Switch will be usable). If that continues, you will only be able to have 2-3 games installed on your Switch at a time if you use the digital store front. Sure 64 a Micro-SD HC card is only $20ish right now, but that all adds up if you are having to get one for every four games you download.
Click to expand...

You can get larger than 64GB but yeah, at some point depending on game size it is really a matter of how do you plan on using it or if you plan on buying any virtual console games. If you are going to get a lot of virtual console games or are going to use it on the road a lot then SD cards would needed or would at least be better for on the road. Even if you need one for every 4 or 5 games, that is still 1/4 or 1/5th the number of cards that you are going to have to carry around which for people with a lot of games that can add up to a lot of space saving quickly. If you are going to use it mostly at home and won't be getting many virtual console games then maybe a single additional SD card is all you will ever need if you even ever need that. As we already know that Nintendo won't have sales so there won't be any reason money wise to get digital games it is only a matter of not having to swap out games cards as much. Which for some people that alone is enough of a reason to get the largest card possible. I have repurchased games that I own on physical media in the past as a digital copy just to save myself the need to swap out games on the Xbox 360. With my move over to the One, I have I think 3 maybe 4 physical Xbox One games, the other 180 games that I have are all digital. So I just have two external 2TB HDs connected and when I want to take the system somewhere just toss in the drives into a bag and I can take all almost 200 games with me instead of trying to carry almost 200 games with me. A few of those were games that when they went backwards compatible and I had them on physical 360 media I repurchased as digital just to have a digital copy and not need the disk if I ever wanted to play it again.
 
Shmee said:
If that continues, you will only be able to have 2-3 games installed on your Switch at a time if you use the digital store front. Sure 64 a Micro-SD HC card is only $20ish right now, but that all adds up if you are having to get one for every four games you download.
Click to expand...
Would've been nice if you could attach a USB drive to the Switch stand, then just transfer the games you want to be portable to the handheld. Ah well not like I'm buying one.
 
As long as I can plop in a regular SD card I don't care. My 3DS came with a different brand SD card than a family member's. One of us had Sandisk, the other something else, don't recall what. We both ordered a Transcend to replace the stock one.
 
This has all the traits of being a disappointment, over priced memory cards, using a phone app for comms, lack of disclosure about the tegra CPU. I might be wrong and I hope I am.
 
The Vita had some of the most absurd memory card pricing that I had ever seen. Had to pay something like $60 for an 8GB card.
 
Chebsy said:
This has all the traits of being a disappointment, over priced memory cards, using a phone app for comms, lack of disclosure about the tegra CPU. I might be wrong and I hope I am.
Click to expand...

You don't HAVE to buy the Switch branded SD cards. This is nothing new Wii and Wii U branded SD cards cost a lot more than normal ones too. The branding means that companies can charge more because suckers will buy it not knowing any better. Happens all the time in the tech industry. A lot of products simply get rebraned and sold under a more expensive brand and people buy it based on the brand name despite being able to get the exact same product for significantly cheaper under a different name.

The whole phone thing is weird and confusing. The Switch itself has an audio jack that they specifically say supports headphones and headsets. 3rd parties are selling wired Switch headsets, some labeled as "chat" devices. The entire thing is just poorly explained.

Nintendo doesn't talk specs. You're not going to get detailed information out of them, it's just not what they do.
 
Comixbooks said:
Sold out everywhere pre-orders I bet they won't even meet the Demand at Christmas time.
This system is a very hip system I bet they Hype is comparable to the Wii or maybe tne Nintendo 64
not the NES or SNES though.
Click to expand...

Show me raw numbers. Sometimes companies intentionally make limited # of pre-orders to generate hype. "SOLD OUT OF PRE ORDER INVENTORY" sounds a lot more exciting than "Sold 10,000 units!"
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Show me raw numbers. Sometimes companies intentionally make limited # of pre-orders to generate hype. "SOLD OUT OF PRE ORDER INVENTORY" sounds a lot more exciting than "Sold 10,000 units!"
Click to expand...

At least two million for the first month. Nintendo told their investors that they plan to sell two million units by the end of their fiscal year (March 31st). Outside of that there are no solid numbers. The only numbers we have are Gamestop saying they have 250k people on a pre-order waiting list, but no solid numbers about how many they we allotted.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Show me raw numbers. Sometimes companies intentionally make limited # of pre-orders to generate hype. "SOLD OUT OF PRE ORDER INVENTORY" sounds a lot more exciting than "Sold 10,000 units!"
Click to expand...

Given this is Nintendo. I would expect every location to have a huge number on hand.. So many in fact that a person with all but two fingers missing would be able to count them with no trouble.
 
Derangel said:
At least two million for the first month. Nintendo told their investors that they plan to sell two million units by the end of their fiscal year (March 31st). Outside of that there are no solid numbers. The only numbers we have are Gamestop saying they have 250k people on a pre-order waiting list, but no solid numbers about how many they we allotted.
Click to expand...

Planned vs able aren't always the same thing. Oculus planned on selling 25 million units in 4 years. Yet they couldn't produce enough for preorders and they also won't ever hit 25 million now that the first wave to get them is gone. The New 3DS sold out at launch and they had nowhere near 2 million of those sold during launch week, just over 300K in the USA and Europe. The Wii was sold out and wasn't at the 2 million mark. US had 600K, Japan had 400K, all of Europe was 325K, most other places 10-40k for countries so you are probably around 1.5 million or a little more for the first week. Wii U was only 600K, although I also don't think they sold out of those at launch in fairness. So they would have had to really ramped up production compared to normal, which since they discontinued the Wii U last year that could be possible, in order to get anywhere near the number of units out the door that they are saying in 2 weeks.
 
I don't care really, if people want to waste their money more power to them. So long as the device works fine with normal SD cards I see no issue. Where it becomes a deal breaker is when you pull shit like what Sony did with the Vita.
 
Derangel said:
You don't HAVE to buy the Switch branded SD cards. This is nothing new Wii and Wii U branded SD cards cost a lot more than normal ones too. The branding means that companies can charge more because suckers will buy it not knowing any better.
Click to expand...
It's not accurate to say that people are suckers for buying branded accessories.

I have a cheap 16GB sdcard from probably around ten years ago (I bought it so long ago that it was probably close to $100! but even still was a bargain brand compared to the competition at the time). I had to send it in twice under its "lifetime" guarantee. I don't even use it anymore since it's so small and haven't bothered to send it in under a new warranty claim because it's pointless. I can buy one that's probably 4x as large and faster for less than the cost of postage.

When I bought it, there were all different types of classes of cards and you had to research which class to buy to get the peak performance without paying for unnecessary speed (now it's somewhat trivial since they are around $20-40 bucks but back then when they could get close to 10x the cost it mattered more). Even still you had to read reviews to make sure your class Z wasn't operating at class X speeds, reading or writing at different speeds, etc.

Or you could just to go Toys R Us and grab a Switch from once section and buy the SDCard hanging next to it for a cost that most working adults buying this who aren't stretching their budget wouldn't really consider a major impediment to the total cost and if it doesn't perform you can take it back in to the store and/or contact Nintendo and complain.

That's a similar thing to calling people idiots for buying an SDCard at Best Buy instead of Amazon or Ebay. Case in point: I just bought a pack of CR2025 batteries from eBay for .99 w/ free shipping. They took a couple months (expected) and none worked (relatively expected). My wife, who is Chinese, laughed when she saw me testing them out of the package and asked what I had expected to happen. Well, about what I got but I was thinking maybe one of them would have worked :)

Filed my claim with the seller and requested a refund but I figure I'll probably see another package in a couple months. With any luck, I'll have 5 working batteries in a year!
 
I wonder how many units were actually produced on the first run of this console.
 
I heard somewhere Switch will support 2TB sd cards or even more if they come out...
 
Initial asking price is absurd for a small tablet with docking station. If they hit $199 it would be sold out for the first year or more. The initial sell out will end 2 months after introduction, then the store shelves will fill up until Nintendo comes back down to earth. Maybe Nintendo won't come back down to earth like they did with the Wii U flop. I think the product is innovative and has a ton of promise but Nintendo really needs to consider going the Sega route. Their first party games are amazing but not amazing enough to waste $300 on an underpowered console / overpriced tablet with decent controls.
 
Methadras said:
See, this is the kind of bullshit that keeps me away from this stuff.
Click to expand...
This would only make sense if they locked you into using their branded cards. But they don't, so what's the issue keeping you away? If you don't want to buy their branded cards, then buy a different one from Amazon...problem solved.
 
I can understand charging a premium for official branded memory cards - but 3x?

mope54 said:
This would only make sense if they locked you into using their branded cards. But they don't, so what's the issue keeping you away? If you don't want to buy their branded cards, then buy a different one from Amazon...problem solved.
Click to expand...

I'm worried about all the attractive single non-tech savvy moms out there who may not necessarily know that any SD card would work for their kid's new Nintendo Switch or would mistakenly believe that a Nintendo-branded card would be the 'safe' bet. Nintendo's preying on attractive non-tech savvy moms and Seymour's had enough of that shit.
 
The article has been corrected. The Hori branded card is around $10 more than a comparable SDCard. There is more price differentiation if you walk into a Best Buy and buy one off the shelf compared to Amazon.

Also, since they are just comparing Amazon pricing, there isn't going to be anyone caught by surprise. All of the SDCards are going to show up *and* when you scroll down to the reviews they also construct a nice info block comparing the one you are thinking about with others similar to it.

In any case, the author of the article was comparing list price to some 3rd party pricing, which as you know are both BS. Now that he's gone back in and actually selected the Hori card and what he thought was the least expensive option he found out what everyone who has ever used Amazon before already knows (MSRP is a nonsense number as are the "seller X is offering it for 46% lower price [+shipping/handling]").

That's also ignoring the fake low prices for products that will never arrive and the fact that those 3rd party options include refurbished/used products. I can't understand how this article became news both on the site it was originally posted or here on [H].
 
mope54 said:
This would only make sense if they locked you into using their branded cards. But they don't, so what's the issue keeping you away? If you don't want to buy their branded cards, then buy a different one from Amazon...problem solved.
Click to expand...

Wait, so it's not a locked (proprietary) card?
 
SeymourGore said:
Nope, just standard SD card. Which is nice, if I had any complaint about my Vita - it's the proprietary memory. Oh, and the lack of love by Sony.
Click to expand...
The two things go hand in hand, I'm afraid. I decided to pick up a used Vita on Friday (arriving tomorrow) since there are some games I'd like to play (on the Vita; don't really want a PS3/4) Gamestop put them on sale at a low enough price that the high cost of a memory card wasn't as big a barrier to me. I told a friend (who like me had broken down and bought into PSP when it was still a thing) and he said there was no price low enough for him to go back on his pledge not to support Sony and their proprietary memory bullshit. I doubt he's alone, and I would have bought the Vita a long time ago if they'd simply supported an SD variant.

So, of course Sony shows little love to the Vita since they hobbled it right out of the game.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top