Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card Overview
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Game-key cards are different from regular game cards, because they don’t contain the full game data. Instead, the game-key card is your "key" to downloading the full game to your system via the internet.
Pay a premium for a physical copy of your game, and the cartridge may not contain the actual game. Only on Nintendo Switch 2.
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G [email protected] shared this topic
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If this is going to be what Switch 2 offers, I'm fully out
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Oh gross, that’s enough to end the retro market entirely. When the Switch 2 retires, the entire used game trade goes with it.
You know, unless hShop picks it up.
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Not that I agree with it, but isn’t this what other consoles have done for about a decade already?
Physical media for games is on its deathbed.
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So they essentially stuffed a download code into a physical cartridge to make people feel like they are getting something?
Isn't that needless and wasteful? Isn't it also going to trick unsuspecting people into buying something they think is a physical version of a game but isn't?
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So these physical copies will only cost $5, right? Lol.
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Seems so. Notably, Switch 1 already has games with a similar warning on the box.
They're just giving a name to it.
On one hand, I'm glad they're up front about it (and I'd rather see an even uglier, larger warning on the cover for game key cards). On the other, I hope this isn't a sign that they're legitimizing it or that it'll be more common.
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Yes/No. Both Sony and Microsoft have quality control processes to ensure that whatever is published is going to play on first entry of the disc.
That said, publishers use A LOT of workarounds. Day 1 patches to "finish" the game. Download code inserts. And as of recent, mandatory online server check-ins. As far as I'm aware, Nintendo is the only one who allows publishing half the product with required download.
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Had a scare when first hearing this. But somewhere else on the site it does specify this as something like "some physical games", and as quoted in OP they're contrasting here with "regular game cards". So it appears real game cards will still be a thing.
So far I've seen screenshots of SFVI and Bravely Default boxarts marked as game-key cards.
I've seen box shots for Mario Kart and Donkey Kong that appear to be normal game cards.
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It's actually not "only on the Switch 2". There were a bunch of Switch one games that only came with a partial set of assets and required a mandatory download to be played.
It sucks, and it's what you get when your physical storage is too expensive and too small, unfortunately.
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Yep. The slight difference is that those Switch games typically included a chunk of the game in the cart and sometimes were partially playable. Short of requiring a smaller download, though, it was the same practical function.
I still don't like it, but those carts get prohibitively expensive at high sizes.
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Nintendo's site says the cartridge must always be inserted in order to play the game, and so it is the cartridge that controls the game license.
On that basis it seems likely you could sell/give the cartridge to someone else, after which they can play it and you no longer can - they'd just also have to download it first.
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Thank you for the clarification!
I still don't like it.
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As someone with two kids who play games on the switch, physical carts keep me from having to buy every game two or three times.
So losing the ability to buy a game and share it between three switches will severely increase the costs of games for me.
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They've been doing that for decades now. Lots of PC games had a box and CD, but the only thing on it was a stub installer to run Steam. Or even if it had the full game, you'd have to download a giant day-one patch to fix all the bugs fixed between the image going gold and the actual release day.
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Nintendo made a huge deal about virtual game cards, saving us from exactly what you're afraid of.
Not as good as what Sony and Microsoft do, where we can essentially install our whole library on every console we have, but it's about as good as what Steam does.
Plus they're bringing back a "game share" like feature, so some multiplayer games should be playable in a local family with only one purchase.
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It's the other way around. You can download the same game in all of your consoles and actually play them at the same time. Something you can't do with cartridges, because you can only play the game in the console where the cartridge is inserted. You'd need one cartridge per console to play the same game simultaneously. So digital games are objectively better for your scenario.
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I don't like the idea of a game that can't be played long after the servers have gone down.
But I'm glad that it can still be traded or sold after purchase unlike what Xbox tried to do.
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Now you've got me curious what capacity a UMD form factor could achieve with a UHD Blu-ray laser.
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Good question. What was the UMD, 1GB? From the DVD default, which was 4GB single layer and 8 dual layer? Blurays are 25GB single layer,so 25% of that is like 7gigs, which is still smaller than the 16gigs the larger Switch carts were. But hey, a lot of games on Switch were smaller, dual layer discs would get you almost to the same size and be a fraction of the cost.
Well, the discs would be. I have no idea how much the weird plastic caddy on UMDs pushed the price up.
