Be Careful With Your Save Data on the Switch, You Might Lose It

The Nintendo Switch has seen a great launch, exceeding Nintendo's expectations for the first month of retail. But that isn't without growing pains, as the Switch has seen some less encountered, but detrimental setbacks. One of which being the inability to externally back up game save data, which turns into a real problem if something happens to your Switch.

GamesRadar writer Anthony John Agnello tells a story about his experience with Nintendo support. His Switch was broken for an unknown reason and Nintendo was quick to take it in for repair (at least their customer service is on point!) but his repair was coupled with this message from Nintendo.

"We have inspected the Nintendo Switch system that was sent to us for repair and found that the issue has made some of the information on this system unreadable. As a result, the save data, settings, and links with any Nintendo Accounts on your system were unable to be preserved."

He lost 55 hours of progress in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. As far as his account goes, all he has to do is re-log in and he gets what digital games he had before, but his progress is gone. Consoles of the past have had an external memory unit for game saves while the Switch does not. The old Xbox 360s had those massive clunky blocks that clicked in on the top of the system, and before that, the PS2 had memory cards. Even previous Nintendo consoles allowed external saving. So why doesn't the Switch?

The most likely answer is security. External saving could allow a window for someone to hack the Switch and possibly pirate games and other such problems. While this is unfortunate for loyal, paying customers, it makes sense from a business point of view as similar things have happened to the Wii and the 3DS in the past. Hopefully, most Switch users won't have problems with their system where their save data is lost, as it's not a wide-spread problem. A cloud save function similar to Steam would be a nice workaround, however, if Nintendo ever decided to go that route.