Nintendo Switch consoles can’t share microSD cards

The Nintendo Switch’s inability to transfer game saves across consoles seems a curious omission for a console lacking online cloud backups of those saves. Switch save data is stored in the console’s system memory, and currently cannot be copied to any external storage medium.

That starts to make more sense once you realize that you can’t switch consoles with your SD card. If you remove a microSD card from a Switch and pop it into a different Switch, you’re greeted with the following warning:

The microSD card is being used by another Nintendo Switch console or was used on this console before it was initialized.

Delete the Nintendo Switch data on the microSD card to use it on this console.

Save data, screenshots, and other data not related to Nintendo Switch won’t be deleted. You can remove the microSD card if you don’t want to use it on this console.

It’s not clear why “save data” is included in this list if you’re unable to store save data on the microSD card in the first place. Perhaps a future update will enable the feature, or Nintendo is simply choosing this language to assuage concerns about save data integrity should you need to use the card in a second console.