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A look into why NBA Playgrounds on Switch got its new Enhanced Edition

by rawmeatcowboy
08 January 2018
GN Version 5.0

NBA Playgrounds on Switch has had quite the bumpy road. The game itself was fine, but extra features and patches that hit other versions were held back for Switch. Now we have the Enhanced Edition on Switch, which asks you to delete your current version of the game and install the new one. It even has a smaller file size than the original. So what's the deal with all the weirdness, and why did everything take so long? Here are the only details known thus far.

- developer Saber had online play working on the Switch well before July
- the update was delayed for weeks as Saber negotiated with Nintendo
- the patch apparently did not meet Nintendo’s technical requirements for the Switch eShop
- the original game took up 7.4 GB on the Switch
- the original patch would have pushed the file size to 9.6 GB
- Saber had to get an exception from Nintendo for a patch that big, a process that took “almost 3 weeks”)
- the large file size resulted from developing NBA Playgrounds as a multiplatform title
- they also started the project “far in advance of having any access to Nintendo’s Switch development resources.”
- Saber was hoping to reduce the file size with the July patch, planning to cut from 7.4 GB to approximately 3.5 GB
- at the time, Nintendo did not support shrinking file size with a patch
- the Enhanced Edition of the game was Saber's solution to the issue
- Enhanced Edition takes up 7.6GB, instead of the original plan for 3.5GB

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