there where DVDs and and CDs had a perfect balance between storage and read speed
90% of the games didn’t need that much storage. As someone growing up in a country with no copyright laws at the time, I was used to 100-200 games on a single CD. Then my dad got an official copy of MK Trilogy and I remember thinking how wasteful it was to use an entire CD for one game (you could physically see on the surface of the CD how much data was recorded on it, and it was mostly unused space).
Then there was the rare game that used not only the entire storage, but needed multiple CDs for the whole thing (e.g. Phantasmagoria).
We could go back to games coming on flash media, which switch does still do
Switch games get online updates too though. They’re not much different from other platform games in that regard.
The overall issue being discussed is not physical media vs downloading games. It’s the fact that the games you get are not a final playable version, but still need additional downloads to make them playable (zero-day patches are a norm these days).
90% of the games didn’t need that much storage. As someone growing up in a country with no copyright laws at the time, I was used to 100-200 games on a single CD. Then my dad got an official copy of MK Trilogy and I remember thinking how wasteful it was to use an entire CD for one game (you could physically see on the surface of the CD how much data was recorded on it, and it was mostly unused space).
Then there was the rare game that used not only the entire storage, but needed multiple CDs for the whole thing (e.g. Phantasmagoria).
Switch games get online updates too though. They’re not much different from other platform games in that regard.
The overall issue being discussed is not physical media vs downloading games. It’s the fact that the games you get are not a final playable version, but still need additional downloads to make them playable (zero-day patches are a norm these days).