Since the announcement of the Batman: Arkham Trilogy making its official debut on the Nintendo Switch this year, we have now come across even more details on what the physical copies will include, or should I say not include. Unfortunately for physical game purchasers, not only will the cartridge, or what Nintendo likes to call "game cards", lack the entire trilogy but it will only come with Batman: Arkham Asylum pre-installed on the cartridge. To play Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Knight you will need online access as mentioned on the official website.
Does the Nintendo Switch physical version of Batman: Arkham Trilogy include all three games on one cartridge?
Batman: Arkham Asylum will be included on the Batman: Arkham Trilogy game cartridge. Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Knight will require an online connection to download and install both titles when the Batman: Arkham Trilogy cartridge is inserted into the Nintendo Switch console. All three games will then be playable as long as the cartridge is inserted into the Nintendo Switch console.
You might be asking why would a publisher release a physical game without actually including the game. We can only presume this choice is being made to save on costs by using a cheaper-sized cartridge. If we dive further into what is currently known about Nintendo Switch cartridges, we will discover that the largest storage size maxes out at 64 GB.
This is not the first physical game on Nintendo Switch to release without the complete experience included. Resident Evil Revelations Collection for example only included the first game of the two-part collection on the cartridge. Bizarrely, Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath Kollection didn't even include the cartridge in their physical releases.
Focusing back on the Batman situation and based on past releases such as Batman: Arkham Collection, we can get the approximate amount of storage a Nintendo Switch game card would need to fit such a large game. My rough estimate on Xbox One would be around 115 GB for the entire trilogy and all of it's DLC. Individually it would be 15 GB for Batman: Arkham Asylum, 20 GB for Batman: Arkham City, and 80 GB for Batman: Arkham Knight.
As a result not only would it not be possible to fit onto a 64 GB cartridge but it wouldn't even be close to possible unless Nintendo begins offering 120 GB game cards. But that's under the assumption the Batman: Arkham Trilogy will require the same amount of storage as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One version which seems unlikely.
If we venture off into the past you will find the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 releases of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City have very reasonable storage requirements sitting at around 15 GB for both games without the DLC. I would take a very educated guess that the Nintendo Switch version will have a reduction in texture quality when compared to the PlayStation 4 version, most likely more in line with the Xbox 360 quality target.
But what completely throws this comparison out the window is the lack of Batman: Arkham Knight. Due to the insufficient horsepower, Rocksteady opted to skip the seventh generation of consoles and even the Wii U, so we lack any real estimate on the amount of storage it would fill up on the Nintendo Switch.
Regardless it makes little sense why they opted not to package at least the first two games, that being Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, as they would fit perfectly on a 64 GB cartridge. We can only conclude it was a money-saving measure as the 64 GB cartridges do cost a premium over the 32 GB variant.
Certainly, 120 GB cartridges are a possibility in the future and if the price of SD cards is anything go off of, it will soon become a reality. Not only is storage an issue on all platforms in the present but it's an issue Nintendo will eventually face as their exclusive games begin expanding further, most likely on the Nintendo Switch 2 that's long been rumored.
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