The Nintendo Switch ships with very limited, non-upgradeable internal memory of just 32GB. Only 26GB of that is usable as storage. It makes a micro SD card purchase almost mandatory, but opting to purchase Switch games on cartridges should bypass any need to install a game. The 26GB should therefore just be for save games. For Lego City Undercover, that's definitely not the case.

Anyone choosing to purchase a physical copy of Lego City Undercover when it launches on April 4 is in for a shock. Copies of the game are starting to arrive at retailers, and a note on the case posted on Reddit reveals a 13GB game download and install is required before it can be played.

So not only do you need to set aside 13GB of storage even though you own the cartridge, you'll also need to be connect to the Internet and perform a large download before the game becomes playable.

There's a couple of reasons why this decision may have been taken, one more likely than the other. The first is that the game was sent to manufacture before it was ready so as to hit a release date, meaning the 13GB patch is required to present the player with a working game. This seems unlikely because Lego City Undercover isn't new. It was originally released back in 2013 on the Wii U. The Switch version is simply a port.

The second reason is publisher Warner Bros. decided to save money. The cost of each Switch cartridge increases depending on how much data is stored on it. By shipping a smaller cartridge and demanding a 13GB download, Warner saves money on every cartridge manufactured. If this is the reason, it makes the $60 price of the game even harder to swallow.

Paying $60 for a game that's only $20 on Wii U is enough to put many off purchasing the game on launch day. But more worrying is the fact this practice could become the norm for publishers if it saves them a substantial amount of cash on manufacturing costs. Let's hope not.