Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy Gets A Meaty File Size, By Switch Standards

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, if you want to use its full name, has made headlines today with the unveiling of its debut trailer and release details. Naturally some questions for big GTA fans and indeed Switch collectors have revolved around the file size and what we can expect from the Switch physical version.

Well, it’s certainly in the top list of sizeable Switch games, with the North American eShop page listing it as 25.4GB. That’s pretty small fry if you happen to download a lot of games on systems like PS5 and Xbox Series X, but is relatively high end on Nintendo’s hybrid. Only select titles like Doom (2016) and the NBA 2K games come in with larger file sizes.

If you’re going for the eShop version on 11th November you may be fine, especially as relatively big microSD cards are quite affordable in this day and age. It’ll raise questions about the retail version, though, as an ‘all on the cartridge’ offering would necessitate Rockstar paying out for the higher capacity stock from Nintendo (or a deal being struck on more favourable terms). We’ve seen plenty of occasions where publishers buy cartridges with too little memory and enforce mandatory downloads on players; it’s not a popular practice of course, as it rather detracts from the point of having the cartridge at all.

Rockstar does have some negative precedent with this. L.A. Noire was a hefty 29GB for the download version, but even those with the physical edition had to download 14GB of the game.

At the time of writing there’s no confirmation as yet on how much of the game will be on the cartridge; we’ll keep an eye out for updates.