Summary
The Switch port ofHogwarts Legacywill receive a massive day-one patch that will be mandatory to download, Warner Bros. subsidiary Portkey Games has announced. Owners of Nintendo’s hybrid console will finallyget to playHogwarts Legacyon November 14.
The hitHarry PotterRPG was originally treated to a staggered release, which started with its debut on PC and the current-generation consoles back in February.Hogwarts Legacythen made its way to the PS4and Xbox One three months later, and was originally planned to hit the Switch in late July before that version was pushed back by nearly four months.
With the November 14 release date fast approaching, Portkey Games has now confirmed that the Switch port ofHogwarts Legacywill come with a day-one patch that will require around 8GB of free storage space to install. The update will be required for playing the game, the publisher has confirmed, in addition to clarifying that the physical versions of both the Standard and Deluxe Editions ofHogwarts Legacywill come on a cartridge that’s approximately 7GB in size. Taken together, those two information tidbits suggest that the day-one patch largely exists because the publisher wanted to cut costs on its Switch licensing fees, which scale with cartridge sizes.
That’s not meant to be a criticism of Portkey Games. Supplementing small cartridge sizes with day-one downloads has been a standard industry practice since the Switch first hit the market in 2017. As then explained by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, a 32GB Switch cartridge is approximately 60% more expensive than a 50GB Blu-ray disc for the PS4, which prompted many publishers to limit physical releases to 8GB and instead require sizable day-one update downloads.
Portkey Games also confirmed that additional language packs forHogwarts Legacywill weigh around 1.5GB a piece on the Switch. Overall, the upcoming port will still be much more efficiently compressed than the original version of the hitHarry PotterRPG. As a reminder,Hogwarts Legacyweighs around 80GBon the current-generation consoles and PC.
The space savings achieved on the Switch largely stem from the lower-resolution textures that will be used on Nintendo’s console. Fans can still expect graphics that are artistically close to other versions of the game, at least ifthe firstHogwarts LegacySwitch screenshotsthat recently emerged on the eShop are any indication.
Hogwarts Legacyis available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, and releases November 14 for Nintendo Switch.
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