You'll Need A Memory Card To Install L.A. Noire On The Nintendo Switch

Gamers are used to having plenty of storage on most game consoles. Even if you buy the basic versions of the Xbox One or PS4, you have 500GB of storage at your disposal. One of the caveats with a small console like the Nintendo Switch is that you can't fit a normal hard drive inside something so thin, so you end up with a small amount of internal flash storage. The Switch has 32GB of internal storage to be exact.

All the system software eats up about 6GB of that total leaving gamers with just 26GB of internal storage to store downloadable games and system updates. With Nintendo using cartridges for Switch games you might think those cartridges would store the game content leaving your 26GB for digital games alone. However, that isn’t always true.

When Rockstar's L.A. Noire lands for the Switch on November 14, you will need large amounts of storage space no matter what version of the game you purchase. If you opt for the digital download version of L.A. Noire, you will need a whopping 29GB of storage space. That means you must have a microSD card installed to download the digital version.

If you buy the physical version of the game, you will still need lots of storage. The physical version of the game reportedly requires about 16GB of game data to be downloaded and installed. If you have any other games on the Switch that required storage space, you will likely need a microSD card for the physical version of the game. The good news is that you can pick up 32GB microSD cards on the cheap for around $13.

The catch with going with a card that small is if this trend of massive download sizes for both digital and physical versions of AAA titles continues, that 32GB card is only going to hold one or two games. A larger 256GB microSDXC card will work in the Switch, but those cost around $130.