The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom now reigns supreme as the first-party Nintendo game with the largest file size. Nintendo released the second official trailer for Tears of the Kingdom during its February 8 Nintendo Direct presentation. The highly anticipated follow-up to Breath of the Wild will have a $70 price point.
As fidelity increases and open worlds become bigger and more detailed, file sizes have risen along with them. While Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t excessively eat up disk space like more recent Call of Duty titles, like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War which is an astounding 250 GB, the fact that even Nintendo is pushing boundaries for file sizes within the context of its first-party offerings is notable.
Soon after Nintendo revealed the second trailer for Tears of the Kingdom as the closing act of its Nintendo Direct, its eShop listing went live with all the game’s relevant technical details, including supported play modes, supported languages, and its ESRB rating. One of those details was its file size, which clocks in at 18.2 GB. This stands Tears of the Kingdom head-and-shoulders above any other first-party Nintendo games but doesn't make it the game with the biggest file size in the eShop. That distinction goes to NBA 2K21 and its 41.6 GB download.
A majority of Nintendo’s first-party offerings released on the Switch fall somewhere in the range of 2 to 6 GB. Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a pseudo-open world game that was only released in January 2022, and has a file size of 6.1 GB. But Breath of the Wild and now Tears to the Kingdom are significantly larger, more detailed games that are truly open world. As a point of comparison, Breath of the Wild used to hold the title of Nintendo’s largest first-party game file size, coming in at 14.4 GB. There’s no telling what that extra four gigs comprises, but recent file size increases can usually be attributed to 4K textures on in-game assets and large audio files, especially for fully voiced characters.
The only other first-party Nintendo titles to come close to Tears of the Kingdom’s 18.2 GB file size are Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Fire Emblem Engage, which come in at 14.38 and 12.65 GB, respectively. Paired with the aforementioned price hike to $70, it seems Nintendo is subtly hinting at a larger open world stuffed with more content than Breath of the Wild. This can also be interpreted from the trailers that have been released so far, which show off a ground-level open world of a similar scope to Breath of the Wild, but the gameplay areas now expanding into the sky.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launches May 12 for Nintendo Switch.
Source: Nintendo eShop