Wednesday, April 16th 2025
"Unpopular" microSD Express Cards Snapped Up in Japan; Switch 2 Showcase Inspired Sudden Buyer Interest
Up until very recently, the microSD Express format was viewed as a commercial disappointment for involved manufacturers and suppliers. Potential buyers were not attracted to premium price points; as demanded by designs that can leverage (up to) 900 MB/s read speeds. Hermitage Akihabara—a Japanese electronics and computer hardware chain—has tracked an alarmingly sharp climb in demand for microSD Express products. The popular retailer documented this recent trend across several articles, with last week's investigation diving deep into units selling: "at a rate of 337.62 cards per hour!" The upcoming launch of a highly-anticipated mainstream gaming device has seemingly sharply driven up sales of a largely forgotten storage format. Hermitage Akihabara explored this unprecedented turnaround in fortunes: "Nintendo's influence is amazing. The 'microSD Express card,' which had hardly any sales due to lack of use, sold out in an instant as soon as it was announced that it would be used in the Nintendo Switch 2. It was sold out not only in (our) Akihabara shops but also on EC sites nationwide, and it caused such a stir that it was even covered in the general news."
Hermitage Akihabara expects to replenish its stock within a non-specific timeframe—but prices could remain "quite high," due to manufacturers (reportedly) being fairly conservative with production output. The store's "behind the scenes of the microSD Express card sellout" news piece outlined some compelling data points: "our mail order service received a large number of orders. According to the calculations made by the mail order staff, they were selling at a rate of 5.63 units per minute, or 337.62 units per hour, which was also a surprise. Of course, we didn't have that much stock, but it seems that we were selling as much as we had. One interesting thing is that most of the buyers ordered only one copy. At most, three copies were purchased, and more than 80% of people ordered one copy. Most of the buyers were pure users who wanted to save one to use with the Switch 2." As reported earlier in the month, Lexar has readied the world's first 1 TB microSD Express card. Their $199.99 (MSRP) 1 TB PLAY PRO microSDXC Express model is already available to purchase, months in advance of Switch 2's global launch date (June 5). Industry insiders believe that Samsung is collaborating with Nintendo on an "official" range of microSD Express cards.
Sources:
GDM Japan, TechSpot
Hermitage Akihabara expects to replenish its stock within a non-specific timeframe—but prices could remain "quite high," due to manufacturers (reportedly) being fairly conservative with production output. The store's "behind the scenes of the microSD Express card sellout" news piece outlined some compelling data points: "our mail order service received a large number of orders. According to the calculations made by the mail order staff, they were selling at a rate of 5.63 units per minute, or 337.62 units per hour, which was also a surprise. Of course, we didn't have that much stock, but it seems that we were selling as much as we had. One interesting thing is that most of the buyers ordered only one copy. At most, three copies were purchased, and more than 80% of people ordered one copy. Most of the buyers were pure users who wanted to save one to use with the Switch 2." As reported earlier in the month, Lexar has readied the world's first 1 TB microSD Express card. Their $199.99 (MSRP) 1 TB PLAY PRO microSDXC Express model is already available to purchase, months in advance of Switch 2's global launch date (June 5). Industry insiders believe that Samsung is collaborating with Nintendo on an "official" range of microSD Express cards.
14 Comments on "Unpopular" microSD Express Cards Snapped Up in Japan; Switch 2 Showcase Inspired Sudden Buyer Interest
They are backwards compatible, however no point spending if you are not going to use the express part.
The Switch 2 is going to be a very expensive device to use.
The only one I can think of is SanDisk's own microSD Express USB-C reader, so unless you just need to store data on microSDs thats the only use for it. Might as well just get USB 3.2 Gen 2 flash drives which are currently cheaper.
We can blame smartphone manufacturers for SD Card stagnation. Many have removed SD Card slots from their smartphones. Many smartphones do not even support UHS-II or UHS-III speeds. Instead they have weaponized non-expandable internal storage in a bid to upsell higher capacity models and their cloud storage services.
If they allowed fast and cheap SD expansion i feel like most people would not bother buying 512GB or 1TB versions of their models. They would buy the baseline 128GB and expand it with MicroSDXC (or SD Express) instead. It is their fault SD Express has not taken off.
If you go at 10:00, you will hear that the $80 price for some games is for their digital version. If you want the game in it's physical version you add $10 extra. And that's in the beginning of life of the console. If Switch 2 succeeds, AAA game prices will only go up.If Switch 2 ends up faster than a Steam Deck for example, that means that PC games will be ported to it, that means that PC game sizes, will start becoming more common in Switch 2.
Also not everyone enjoys a fast internet line and even if they do, Switch is a handheld device, not a console that someone sticks on a TV. So if you go on a trip, you probably want all or most of your games available. And do people spent over $500 for a console to play 5 games? 10 games? And considering Switch's expected life of 7 years, 2-3 games per year is probably enough to fill that storage, if we assume that people will only buy that many games.
A few more thoughts. Is that storage all available for games? Do people who want to grab a Switch and dive into a game have enough patience to wait for the game to download?
So many excuses to pay for that extra storage
www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/nintendo-maintains-nintendo-switch-2-pricing-retail-pre-orders-to-begin-april-24-in-u-s/?srsltid=AfmBOopdNbtjw1Y3FY32MTmvG3DlNdG0CyhKImVySto83eR9OdB-_OZl
Anyway, this is something that should bother the buyer of Switch 2. Paying $450 for a console before seeing how prices of the games evolve could be a bad idea. If I was paying $450 for a console it would have been difficult to NOT swallow the game prices. So I would wait before paying those $450.