Leo Lopez
Member
It's widely expected in the industry that Nintendo will unveil the successor to the Switch sometime in the first quarter of next year, and one of the biggest questions surrounding this new hardware is what storage solution it will adopt.
The current Switch supports most microSD cards with at least a 60 MB/s transfer speed, but if Nintendo wants to elevate their games to modern standards, such speeds may fall short. However, M.2 NVMe SSDs, used for next-gen consoles and the Steam Deck, might generate excessive heat and power consumption, making them unsuitable for the Switch 2's lightweight design. So, what will Nintendo choose?
Samsung's recent release of the new SD Express microSD card series might hold the answer. This series is set to debut later this year with an initial capacity of 256GB, followed by a 1TB version, boasting transfer speeds of up to 800 MB/s. More importantly, Samsung revealed in a press release that these cards were developed through "successful collaboration with customers" to create custom products.
While SD Express technology has been around for a while, its adoption rate has been low due to high costs and a lack of demand between current microSD cards and SSDs. Samsung's collaboration to launch custom solutions aligns perfectly with the Switch 2's needs, leading to speculation that Nintendo might be the customer in question.
If Samsung's new SD Express technology is indeed used in the Switch 2, its 800 MB/s transfer speed would be around 10 times faster than the original Switch, potentially enabling almost instantaneous loading for backward-compatible games. Although 800 MB/s still falls short of the PS5 SSD's 5500 MB/s, it should be sufficient if the Switch 2 aims to achieve performance and graphics quality on par with the PS4.
Of course, until Nintendo officially announces detailed information, all of this remains speculative. Perhaps the "customer" mentioned by Samsung isn't Nintendo after all, but regardless, this new product seems tailor-made for the Switch 2.
The current Switch supports most microSD cards with at least a 60 MB/s transfer speed, but if Nintendo wants to elevate their games to modern standards, such speeds may fall short. However, M.2 NVMe SSDs, used for next-gen consoles and the Steam Deck, might generate excessive heat and power consumption, making them unsuitable for the Switch 2's lightweight design. So, what will Nintendo choose?
Samsung's recent release of the new SD Express microSD card series might hold the answer. This series is set to debut later this year with an initial capacity of 256GB, followed by a 1TB version, boasting transfer speeds of up to 800 MB/s. More importantly, Samsung revealed in a press release that these cards were developed through "successful collaboration with customers" to create custom products.
While SD Express technology has been around for a while, its adoption rate has been low due to high costs and a lack of demand between current microSD cards and SSDs. Samsung's collaboration to launch custom solutions aligns perfectly with the Switch 2's needs, leading to speculation that Nintendo might be the customer in question.
If Samsung's new SD Express technology is indeed used in the Switch 2, its 800 MB/s transfer speed would be around 10 times faster than the original Switch, potentially enabling almost instantaneous loading for backward-compatible games. Although 800 MB/s still falls short of the PS5 SSD's 5500 MB/s, it should be sufficient if the Switch 2 aims to achieve performance and graphics quality on par with the PS4.
Of course, until Nintendo officially announces detailed information, all of this remains speculative. Perhaps the "customer" mentioned by Samsung isn't Nintendo after all, but regardless, this new product seems tailor-made for the Switch 2.
