Hogwarts Legacy Physical & Digital Switch Release Will Require 8GB "Day 1" Update

That is shocking. I never saw this coming.

That is some penny pinching nonsense for such a high profile game.

WB can (redacted for foul langauge)

This is unacceptable. Absurd. Half a year waiting to have a complete physical version and they will stick 8GB in the console with day one patch. Warner is getting everything wrong on Switch.

Is this the first time a patch is bigger than the game itself? If it is, that’s not something Warner Bros. should be proud of…

@Logicfire
No there are a bunch of games (not even just Switch games) where the patch is way, way bigger than the actual data on the cartridge/disc.

My favorite example is last year's Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 where only ~70MB of data comes on the game disc and you have to download a 100GB+ "patch" that contains the actual game contents. I think all future Call of Duty games will follow this model, including the COD games that eventually release on Switch 2.

This could fit on a 16 gb cart. For $60 it absolutely should ship on a 16 gb cart.

I’m honestly just surprise it’s coming to the switch at all, I kinda expected to be a cloud version lol. But I agree a full price game should have the full game on the cart

@BenAV It's actually $10 cheaper than Totk or the PS5 version of Hogwarts in the US. Weird.

I agree with the sentiments that it should all be on a larger card, but I also have to admit I'm surprised they were able to compress this game into 15GB. I'd have plenty of space for it on my switch if I were planning to get it, but I already played and finished it on Series X where it was gigantic, like over 80GB. This ain't a small game.

Same old dance, incomplete games on cheap cartridges.

Partial download is a direct insult toward gamers.
It just wasting the physical games material.
And the games cannot be played in the future when the server got shut down due to incomplete games condition.

This is why Nintendo needs to get rid of any game cartridge lower than 32gb for next gen. Just make 32gb cartridges the standard and maybe we'll have a close to full game on physical.

PFFFFF
Just don't release the game physically smh

If the “game” is 7GB then the required 8GB is neither an update nor a patch, it’s the half of the game you need to download after you install the first half.

When a game ships on 2 discs in a box on PS they don’t say disc 1 is the game and disc 2 is the update patch.

Words matter.

I hate this type of practice but I can see why they do it.

Just be lucky you're not downloading 70GB+ on Steam. Just starting playing it and I had to turn on DLSS and frame generation to get above 60fps on a 4090. Enjoying it though and can't recommend it high enough for Harry Porter fans.

I'm looking forward to how it performs on the Switch

@BenAV They did they same thing on all other consoles too. I was going to get the game on PS4, but the disc doesn't contain the full game and forces a mandatory download. So I never bought it. Same reason I never bought the Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

Yeah...this is a complete "nope" for me. Hard pass.

That’s… much less data to download than I thought

@Serpenterror people don’t realize that Nintendo is as much at fault for this. Proprietary cartridges are expensive and devs won’t pay for a cart bigger than 8gb. It doesn’t make business sense to them. Nintendo needs to lower the price for 32gb and get rid of 8gb for big devs.

Absolutely pathetic and inexcusable.

It's bad enough that 99% of publishers skimp on 32GB cartridges, but 16GB too?

Hard freaking pass.

Imagine buying a "physical" Harry Potter book where 60% of it is an eBook download. This practice is every bit as absurd, yet it's only the video game industry that so often gets away with these sorts of contemptible anti-consumer practices.

That’s awful, but par for the course coming from WB.
BTW: Can we also have a quick report about SEGA dumping a gobsmacking 10 Gbyte patch for the physical version of Sonic Frontiers please. I’m done buying games if publishers keep up this practice.

Hey! The game is not even out yet! How it can require a Day 1 patch already?! That's stupid! Developers became too much lazy and reliant on Wi-Fi/Internet availability.

I'm getting sick of this happening on Switch, but this game is shafted on other platforms too.

At least on PS5, the disc doesn't even have all the data. You have to download the rest as well.

Weird. Still no gameplay footage? The game must run great! XD

Game publishers constantly using practices that insult the idea of getting physical copies of a game? -insert shocked pikachu face here-

The opening 20 mins saw me holding down forward on the left stick and occasionally moving the camera. Enthralling.
Also, YES. WB has been one of the worst of the worst for ages, my dudes.

Hate how some of these third party ports does this kind of crap. They are not even grabbing the 16 carts anymore.

Who is surprised? It is a massive game. I’m buying digitally anyway so no skin off my nose.

It's almost like crying about "PHYSICAL! I'LL ONLY BUY PHYSICAL" or declaring your loyalty to TEAM DIGITAL and creating a culture war between gamers wasn't the right call, and it turned out that the right thing to do from the start was to call out the lack of consumer protections. More and more physical games are basically digital download codes and there is nothing we can do about it because the distribution method was never the core problem, it's the TOS that says we can only play the game if we follow a strict set of rules while the publisher has zero obligation or regulation. The game on the cart is unplayable and the update service can be turned off at any time, so you get all the disadvantages of physical with none of the perceived benefits.

Man, I might even present a theory that the game industry deliberately pushed physical vs. digital mentality on what it knows is a customer base prone to tribalism so that rather then demanding customer protections as a unified voice, they spent all their energy fighting each other over a pointless issue.

**** incomplete games. **** WB.

Why is everyone surprised? It’s a PS5 game right? Of course the physical will need a download.

Buying Pokémon Pearl physical reminded me why I went all digital this generation.
I have a 3gb install for that game ánd a cartridge I need to unlock and play it. Physical media is dead already…. Nevertheless they should stop making these half physical releases and putting the extra costs for it to those who just buy digital. The digital version should be cheaper (and it’s better for the environment)

If this will be a thing with Switch 2 physical games as well, then I'll skip it completely. Enough is enough.

If you cannot launch the game without the patch, it's not a physical release

The game is not that great, it's pretty boring, gave up after a couple of hours. But it's a western AAA so I can't believe it's shocking news for anyone

I really couldn't care less about what's on a cartridge and what's not on a cartridge. I just want a portable way to play this game. If it runs well I'll get it, if it doesn't then I won't. Some of you have your priorities wrong. If you're bothered about only having "half the game" on a cart then just buy physical. It's not a life or death situation, their is a choice and nobody has a gun to your head saying you must buy the physical version. With so much crap going on in the world and people want to complain about this? Get some perspective on life 🤦‍♂️

So is the additional 8GB "patch" an actual patch (i.e. it contains major bug fixes and other stuff) or is it more like they only bothered to put like 45% of the game on a cartridge and the "patch" is just the other 65% of the data?

Will wait for a hefty sale

Is anyone still interested in this? Not to mention the huge delays! This should have all been on cartridge. They've made their money so don't really care now.

@Savage_Joe No, no, none of that! Nintendo could never ever be at fault despite being the biggest anti-consumer company in gaming! Lick the boots only please.

Is there a way to check, whether a physical game can be played without internet connection or updates, before I buy the game?

Not a Harry Potter fan anymore (haven't been one in over a decade, so it has nothing to do with certain statements that J.K. Rowling made in recent years; I just simply grew out of series and moved on to other interests, just like I did with Power Rangers), so this is gonna be a hard skip for me.

I just finished it on PS5. It starts great but I got bored to death by that stale open world. For once, I can't imagine it being good on Switch since the visuals are a big part of the game. And cheapening the physical version sure is an insult

Will be interesting with Switch 2 as I think we need more new third party games on Switch 2 to make a more complete system.
I mean a lot of this generation games are well over 50gb. So I think minimum cartridge size for Switch 2 should be 64gb, don’t forget also games will be more graphical etc on Switch 2 as well.

I know it is disappointing but this is simple economics. The total manufacturing costs of a game on a smaller cartridge comes in at similar numbers to a blu-ray disc but the bigger cartridges can come in over a dollar more.

So what? You might say. Well now look at the difference if you sell 10m copies.... it is big bucks.

It was the same when MS dropped the $1 optical port from Xbox. At scale that comes out at a lot of money.

These companies are driven by profit and nothing else and while a handful of people will decide to not buy this because of the download, most don't care.

Any info about the performance? And if it really looks this good in the final product on switch. Cant believe it looks like this and will run smooth lol.

I am still gonna buy the game tho , cause i dont have other ways to play it ... I just hope it doesnt lag . I dont care about the graphics ... i am a Switch owner after all !!....

"For standard and deluxe digital purchases, this means players will require 15 GB of space for the game and day one patch."

Sounds moderate for a reportedly spacious game by Switch standards, but if the size blatantly sums up even in digital, why call it a "patch" at all? Patches (as opposed to content updates and DLCs) are usually supposed to PATCH, aka replace, at least some of the game files, so the resulting total goes up by less than the patch size at worst and may even remain unchanged at best (rare cases even have the total size reduced like several times in the past with Warframe, if at the expense of enough many asset optimizations to make the patch itself game-sized - and deleting/redownloading the whole thing, ironically less taxing on metered plans). This "patch" walks like an obligatory download and quacks like an obligatory download, but I guess white box warnings on physical cases are considered a marketing turnoff by now.😅

@OldGamer999 a lot of modern games also still pursue redundantly higher resolutions on other systems and, even on Switch's SSD-equipped home peers, still have a reported habit of duplicating assets for faster HDD access. There's a reason Borderlands 3 on Switch packs all of its content into 21 Gb as opposed to the more eye-watering numbers on other platforms.

Oh no, now I have two reasons not to buy this terf crap

"Yer a swindler, WB."

Well, just another game I won't be buying.

@HeadPirate Agreed. But how does one establish publisher obligations and regulations?

I found a site, thanks to a friendly reddit user, which shows whether a physical game can be played offline and if it requires an update to be playable.

It is called doesitplay.org

Pretty cool site. I looked up Sonic Superstars and the site even mentions the bugs and glitches the game has. Definitely will be using this from now on.

I won’t be getting it I’ve almost ran out of storage and I really can’t be bothered with getting a larger card or swapping it with another.

No interest in it but this and Metal Gear collection really shows that for all the physical vs digital articles etc there really isn't actually much physical these days

@Vyacheslav333 Saying the devs are lazy is lazy commentary. Game developers work very hard to put out a product they can be proud of and are not at all at fault for decisions made by the publisher.

The rabbits won't be happy. Munching on their carrots. The rabbits make cartridges. Its quite a squeeze for them when they plop out. Yes, cartridges are really made that way.

That makes the physical release pointless. I don't think developers want you actually owning the games anymore. What if 20 years from now I want to install and play the game and there's no way to download the other half of the game? Not a fan.

Thats unfortunate. I usually don’t buy Switch games with that large day 1 download, but will make an exception here. Have the game on PS4, its a really good game, so want it on Switch too.

Physical 😂😂😂

They don't even try anymore

I'll just grab it digitally if it's a good port, then.

Really, really curious to see how this turns out.

Yikes 😅 I suppose it could have been worse but I'll have to double-check my storage space before buying. In any case I'm more curious to see if the game runs at least OK on Switch. Catches aside, I'm still happy it's actually coming to it 🙂

@RainbowGazelle Regarding Spyro on PS4, my PS4 disc didn’t need any download, and from Google, it looks like later printings of the PS4 version of the game does not require downloads
https://www.reddit.com/r/Spyro/comments/dtu78i/spyro_reignited_trilogy_ps4_disc_with_latest/?rdt=56101

@LillianC14 reminder to not derail comment sections and people can have opinions.
Been thinking of buying all the HP books lately.
Doubt this game will run well but let's wait and see. Might buy it if it does.

We are nearing the 7th year of the Switch and publishers are still cheapimg out... I'm disappointed.

If it's good, I'll just get it on sale. I'm not going to put in money or effort if they don't either.

EDIT: If the port is good, I mean. If it's bad, I'll pinch my nose and get the PS4 version.

@LillianC14 Yeah, I wasn't going to buy it anyway, primarily for that reason.

And the fact that the physical release clearly won't have the whole game on it is another good reason.

Clearly WB and their ilk are keen to kill off physical releases.

How did we ever get used to paying just as much, and usually MORE, for digital releases than for physical?

We.
Are.
Being.
Chumped.

“Western game dev has been here.”
“How can you tell?”

I thought Switch carts had something like 30gigs of space. Why would they only put 7 on the cart?

Is there a video of gameplay for this console or they're still keeping it close to the chest?

First off, this trend is disastrous for game preservation in the long term. These carts essentially have an expiration date.

But contrary to what some posters have said, there is still an advantage to physical. You can sell or lend your cart to someone else. That’s not true with digital, which is always locked to a single user.

@LillianC14 I'm a trans woman, and it both angers and saddens me how people many see that as a selling point of this wizard video game.
And makes it worse how many more see trans anger and/or trans sadness as something to make mockery of.

Just finished 100% the ps5 version is a game for the fans. I preordered the switch version without having high hopes.

@LillianC14 OH my lol just bought 2 copies.

This long and they haven't released but won't put it on-cart update for Switch that isn't even released!! What gives.

@LadyCharlie Some people just live to be mean-spirited. It's sad.

I'd call it a small miracle they managed to port it to the Switch in the first place..

@Anti-Matter when has that ever happened?

@Lightsiyd

They exact same way people are trying to preserve physical releases.

Constantly speak to aggrieve TOS. Make buying decision based on TOS and be vocal about it. Financially support small distributors and pop-up publishers that provide more favorable terms.

If you live in an actual democracy, once this is a visible issue you can support candidates that speak to this issue and avoid ones who do not.

Beyond that, not related to gaming, you can stop using Meta, Apple, or Alphabet products. Not only do they have the most aggressively awful TOS in the industry, but they are spending millions lobbying for reduced consumer rights around software licensing. Be vocal about why you are choosing to avoid them and bring attention to how other companies and even other tech giants provide more rights to their customers.

WB Games, why am I not surprised. Surely it's not a "day one patch" if its actually half the game that needs to be downloaded. such a scummy practice that needs to be stopped

If Nintendo can release Tears of the Kingdom in a fully-playable, no-update-necessary state on the game card, why can't other companies do the same?
We're talking a 16GB game, the same as this release + its mandatory update.
Just put it all on the bigger cartridge, players who want physical will pay more for it.

I think if companies figured out that Nintendo fans care about complete carts, then they would make more money.

“You’re not a wizard ‘arry”

I preordered! I already beat the game on Steamdeck, but I'm excited for a Switch version. Fantastic game and always great fun to return to Rowling's wonderful world.

@Tobiaku Thanks! I did not know that about the PS4 version. I'll look into it now!!

got a 1tb micro sd, bring it =)

@Reprise Most likely the latter.

@ChaoticIgnorance Because it is cheaper to buy the smaller cartridges for their game. Made up numbers here, but buying a 5 dollar cartridge 10,000 times VS 10 dollar cartridge 10,000 times adds up. We have been seeing companies try to pay smaller costs through updates for a while now.

I think that should be illegal. If you make a physical copy you ha to place the entire game in the cartidge/disc or go digital only otherwise you are creating trash, consuming resources, occupying shipping space and storage space for the sellers, consuming fuel and making foul of us players.

@Nua - You price the cart Physical price accordingly, is that math also too hard to calculate as well.

@Makyurax I think that should be illegal. If you make a physical copy you ha to place the entire game in the cartidge/disc or go digital only otherwise you are creating trash, consuming resources, occupying shipping space and storage space for the sellers, consuming fuel and making foul of us players.
That should fall under unfair consumer practices and CPB, FTC, SEC should investigate this.

@SwitchForce I'm not in the business of making or selling Switch games? Not sure how or why you expect me to have exact figure costs on hand for a price comparison example.

@LillianC14 Honestly if we didn’t buy products that were tied to some type of garbage person or their beliefs, we’d literally wouldn't buy anything. If people want to buy something they’ll enjoy they will and it doesn’t mean they support the views of its creator.

Considering WB's track record with ports, I know this game is going to run horribly on Switch.

@Nin10doh Honestly if we didn’t buy products that were tied to some type of garbage person or their beliefs, we’d literally wouldn't buy anything. If people want to buy something they’ll enjoy they will and it doesn’t mean they support the views of its creator.
Overly Generalization of opinions that's unrelated here.