New GameStop leak confirms the Switch 2 will use ‘SSD like’ MicroSD Express format

Drip, drip, drip. For a company with a freaking plumber as its mascot, there sure has been a lot of leaks about the Nintendo Switch 2 lately. So far, we’ve allegedly seen the dock, the Joy-Con, the Joy-Con magnetic rail system, the motherboard, the kickstand, and even a supposed replica from an accessory company. Beyond the software, you might wonder — what else could possibly leak?

Well, my friends, the latest comes from the folks at GameStop, with a leak revealing several Switch 2 accessories in their inventory system. Among these listings is something particularly intriguing: a MicroSD card.

 

Looks like Nintendo Switch 2 SD Express card SKU's are now showing up listed in Gamestop Inventory. pic.twitter.com/RdhfXWBkjI

— Pory (@pory_leeks) January 9, 2025

 

But why is this so exciting, you ask? This isn’t just any MicroSD card. This is a MicroSD Express card, and the differences are more significant than you might imagine. Let’s dive into what makes this new storage solution so special.

To fully understand this story, we need to go back about a year, when Samsung announced they were developing a brand-new format of MicroSD cards, dubbed “Express,” that promised speeds up to 4.4x faster than the fastest cards on the market. According to Samsung, these cards offered SSD-like speeds in the same tiny form factor we’ve known and loved. They also have a significantly larger maximum storage capacity, theoretically maxing out at 128 TB. Yes, 128 TERABYTES!

 

Samsung had this to say about the format when they announced it last year:

The sequential read speed of Samsung’s SD Express microSD card reaches up to 800MB/s — 1.4 times faster than SATA SSDs (up to 560 MB/s) and more than four times faster compared to traditional UHS-1 memory cards (up to 200 MB/s), allowing improved computing experiences in various applications, including PCs and mobile devices. To ensure stable performance and reliability for the small form factor, Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) technology maintains the optimum temperature for the SD Express microSD card, even during long usage sessions.

 

 

But what made this announcement so interesting wasn’t just the new format — it was the claim that the card was “the result of a successful collaboration with a customer to create a custom product.” But who could that customer have been? Even back then, people speculated that Nintendo was the partner, and today’s leak makes it clearer than ever that Nintendo plans to use these cards with the Switch 2.

 

 

So, what can we expect from a Switch 2 using MicroSD Express? According to the SD Association, these cards offer comparable performance to an internal M.2 SSD, so expect significantly faster load times and asset streaming overall.  But, how these improvements will actually materialize in games is a question that can only be answered once we have the Switch 2 in our hands.

Hopefully, that day isn’t too far off. Stay tuned!

 

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