Isn’t all your saved data stored in the device and backed up to the cloud? What games store saved data in the carts?
Gotta pay for cloud saves and trust Nintendo to keep them as long as I might want them, so … no.
The save file is not on the cart, mate.
Would be easier to back it up if it was, and half the games I care about are stored entirely on the console anyways. What are you not getting?
Not all games back up to the cloud and you nees an active NSO subscription to be able to backup to their cloud.
I haven’t seen this video yet (battery almost dead, gonna watch later) but this device appears to let you backup your saves locally without running it by Nintendo.Edit: I forgot that Switch cartridges don’t hold saves so this device can’t do that.
No, the device is purely to dump game cartridges. It has nothing to do with your saves (which are stored on your Switch).
To dump your savegames, you need access to your Switch’s internal USER partition.
On Switch, no game cards support writing of save data or anything else. It’s a departure from 3DS and all previous Nintendo cart formats for as long as games have supported saving at all.
That change is probably done to help tie saves to user accounts, enable cloud saves even when the card is not inserted, accommodate variable-size user data features like level creation, and mitigate the risk of game save based exploits like Twilight Hack spreading from user to user.
Unfortunately that (plus inability to put saves on SD card) means that backing up your own save data requires either being able to run homebrew on the system that has the save or having another Switch that can and relying on Nintendo servers to perform the transfer. Either way, having a Switch that runs homebrew means you don’t need this dumper.
Well that’s disappointing to hear, damn. I see why Nintendo did it that way, and that’s exactly why it’s disappointing they did it that way.
