 So as I was scouring for news today I saw an article by Nintendo Life and they asked an interesting question. Are we ready for a Switch Lite? It is something we haven't really talked about in all the rumors around the Switch Pro and the Switch Mini, Switch XL. A Switch Lite is essentially what the Switch is but a little bit less. And how is it less? Well when we had the Game Boy Lite back in the day that was just a slimmer version of the Game Boy right? It was basically the Game Boy Pocket and that's great. That's everything and made it more pocketable but it was essentially the same platform. Well in this case they're proposing an Xbox One S type solution. For those who don't know rumors are out there. Nothing's confirmed yet that there will be an Xbox One S released this year that drops physical media support and is digital only. This could be, you know, to kind of prepare them for Project X Cloud or it could just be that they want to see how a cheaper budget oriented digital box could do as a test for their next generation system. I think if Microsoft's considering such a thing it would make sense to test it now with a budget oriented option. Now the question that Nintendo Lite puts out there should switch basically do the same thing. Should a Nintendo Switch exist this year or whenever that doesn't let you put in a physical cartridge? And would that be something that people are actually interested in? Now for Microsoft's side of things I can see how it is feasible to release a digital only box. Simply put it uses mechanical hard drives. Mechanical hard drives are super cheap. You can already get Xbox One S's with one terabyte of storage. Now imagine that a digital only one came with, I don't know, two terabytes of storage to make up for the lack of physical media. Though you still install games anyways. So chances are they'd still just make it a one terabyte box. But I think it would be interesting to see Switch do this. Or can Switch do it? I think that's really the grander question here. If you're going to bring up the prospect of a Switch Lite, I think the biggest thing you need to address, the biggest thing you need to figure out, how can a digital only version of the Nintendo Switch actually exist? And there's essentially two options for a digital only Switch to exist. One of them is for it to have a larger internal storage. Right now it only includes 32 gigs. If you are going to go digital only, it has to be at least 500 if not a full terabyte. And if we're talking internal storage, you're not actually going to save money on a Nintendo Switch Lite. It wouldn't be cheaper than a standard Switch. It would be more expensive. That flash internal memory jump, but bumping that to 500 gigs is absolutely insane and is going to make the Switch cost more. So that method doesn't really seem to be feasible, does it? Now, the alternative method is to pack in a micro SD card or rather large micro SD card, say a 480 or a 512 gigabyte micro SD card. But again, at the consumer level, those cards cost you $100 or more dollars or around $100. You can get the 400 one for cheaper than that, you know, I think right now actually on Amazon. But how is that going to translate to the cost of the system? It's not going to make the system cheaper. Right. And Xbox One S with a one terabyte drive that it already has, if you just take out the optical disk, they can cut like 50 bucks off the price and sell you a budget oriented platform. Switch no matter what way you slice it, whether it's with a micro SD card or with more internal storage would just be more expensive. It won't actually be cheaper. And thus I don't know that it could really find that niche in the marketplace that the Xbox One S might might be able to get to with a digital only version. So I don't think it makes a lot of sense. And we actually have some evidence that this doesn't make sense in Sony who attempted to do the same thing with the PSP. I'm not sure how many of you guys remember there used to be a version of the PSP called the PSP go. Yes, not only was it like a slider because what they did is they made the design slimmer easier to fit in your pocket. So you would slide it on phone to get to the controls. It actually is pretty intuitive and is exactly how I would want physical controls to be put on a phone if there ever was a gamer, a true gamer phone that care about physical controls and not using accessories to get it. But that's not really why it failed. It failed because it got rid of physical media. It was a digital only device. Now, granted, when the PSP go came out, this is many, many years ago, you could argue the world wasn't ready for a digital only device. But yet, we run around every single day with a digital only device in our pocket. Many of our computers, be it desktops or laptops, don't have optical drives anymore. We literally live a world that's digital only. So why doesn't this work for a portable video game platform? Well, simply put, we pay a lot more money for those computers, a lot more money for these phones to have the privilege of having all that storage. I mean, phone storage gets insane. Do you see that price increase going from 128 to 256 to 500 on phones? Do you see the hundreds of dollars added to the cost? Now imagine something like that happening on a Nintendo Switch. It just doesn't make feasible sense for Nintendo to release a light version just due to the cost of storage. It's not consumer friendly. And you might say, but our phones, like this is this is the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. This was $1,000 when it released, right? $1,000. Now imagine a Nintendo Switch Lite costing $1,000 just so you could have 500 to one terabyte worth of internal storage. Sounds pretty insane, doesn't it? And you might be like, why can't a phone get away with that? Well, one, they have a lot of payment plan options and stuff like that. Very few people just run out and spend $1,000 on the phone. But beyond that, that's a multifaceted device that does a lot more than just gaming. And while you can watch YouTube and other things on Switch, reality is the Switch isn't replacing our phone in the multifunctionalities our phones provide or our computers provide. It is a very specific type of a device that people aren't going to be willing to spend that kind of money on. So being in the market that the Switch is, I'm not so sure a Switch Lite makes a ton of sense. We've seen it already fail with the PSP Go and it got rid of the optical stuff when it got rid of their little UMD disks. Guess what? It didn't sell. In fact, it tanked and within a year, they stopped making it. So I do think there is a place in the marketplace to make a smaller handheld only version of Switch. I think that could exist. Even though it doesn't appeal to me, I could see why it would appeal to others. I'm pretty sure it would really, really appeal to my children who pretty much never play in docked mode. But beyond that, I still think it would have to have a physical cart thing. You're not going to shrink it and put more storage at the same time. That doesn't make sense. The more memory you pack into it, the more cooling you're going to need eventually for those memory modules. So at the end of the day, I think that this is an interesting talking point. I think it's an interesting discussion to exist since we've seen the PSP go and now the rumors are the Xbox One S is going to do it. But again, the Xbox One S already has cheap storage in it that is, you know, you on a system, you already have to install games on it. So if it's already enough for most consumers, it's going to be enough without the disk drive. Whereas for Switch, there would need to be an addition. You can't just, you can't just subtract a cartridge and then sell it for cheaper. You have to subtract the cartridge and then add something in. Because if you don't, 32 gigs, imagine somebody buys a Switch Lite with only 32 gigs of storage. Heck, even if they doubled it to 64, but Nintendo chopped the price by 50 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever, right? Let's say they do that. People are still going to have to go out and buy extra micro SD cards probably within the first week or two of ownership. And that's that's a no go. People aren't going to be excited about that. The days of it being popularly accepted that you need to go out and buy memory cards for your systems are long gone. So while memory cards for Switch and using the micro SD card is something I think, you know, all of us have gotten used to as Switch owners, there's probably plenty of Switch owners out there that have never even filled their internal storage because they only buy physical games and they only buy Nintendo ones that don't require massive patches. So I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I'm actually curious what you guys think on this front because I can't see a world where Switch Lite makes a lot of sense, but it is an interesting talking point and I wanted to bring it to you guys, credits of Nintendo life or even bringing this topic to the front of my imagination, I guess. And just like the Switch Mini, I'm not really for this one. I think a Switch XL, a Switch Pro, that's the direction I want to see Switch go in. If they do go in this direction, that would be really weird. I think the only justification for it would be if it's a streaming only platform, but Nintendo games aren't going to be on a streaming service anytime soon. So, anyways, folks, I'm Ethan Aroba, just from Nintendo Prime. I'm sure to drop a like on this video. Let's see if we can get this video up to 150 likes. The more likes we get, the more people this gets shared all too. So you're just helping out the channel. And hey, if this is your first time checking out Nintendo Prime, I really hope you enjoyed the conversation and enjoyed this video. Be sure to subscribe for more content and share it with your friends. Let's keep building this special community we have here, one of the best Nintendo communities right here on YouTube. Thank you for tuning in. I love each and every single one of you, and I will catch you in the next one.