Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card Overview
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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.
but it’s about as good as what Steam does.
Explain, since I don't think that's true.
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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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One of the things I really like about the Switch is that I can actually buy a whole physical game that doesn't need an Internet connection. Sure, I have to check a website first, but I can at least curate my wishlist with games that are complete on cart.
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Switch cards hold a maximum of 32GB, maybe that’s why? Although it seems no excuse for Switch 2, given it’s a whole new generation, why not support larger cards? I mean you can buy a 256GB microSD for $15, and that’s a private individual buying one; at scale, the memory can’t be too expensive..
But the Switch cards are not MicroSD cards. MicroSD cards are produced at much larger scales than Switch game cards. And there are many manufacturers producing the MicroSDs. That’s why MicroSD cards are so cheap because there is competition. While the game cards are a bespoke design using non-standard flash memory and only produced by Nintendo’s partners in lower numbers than MicroSD cards. I heard from a publisher that they had to pay $8 per unit for the 16GB card when they released a small indie game for the Switch 1. That was almost the price of the digital version. So they had to charge double for the retail version. The Switch cards are relatively expensive that’s why many publishers opted for a small card and forced the consumer to download the rest even when the game could fit on the bigger card. And Nintendo still takes a royalty for every game sold on top of that.
But even if a publisher could buy a 256GB Switch card for $10 bucks that is money not going into the publishers pocket. So of course a publisher like Activision will opt for the smallest card possible so they can earn a couple of bucks more per game sold.
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but it’s about as good as what Steam does.
Explain, since I don't think that's true.
Steam sells non-transferable lifetime licenses to each game you "buy", that let you play it on one PC at a time but never transfer it to anyone else, even as part of an inheritance after your death.
If you have a family there is a "sharing" plan which allows you to let family members also play some of the games in your library, but not at the same time.
Nintendo is imposing a bit more ceremony if you want to share digital games each time you share them, but the essential "one device at a time" nature is the same that steam imposes.
(And this ignores the shareable multiplayer aspect, which steam doesn't really do at all.)
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Steam sells non-transferable lifetime licenses to each game you "buy", that let you play it on one PC at a time but never transfer it to anyone else, even as part of an inheritance after your death.
If you have a family there is a "sharing" plan which allows you to let family members also play some of the games in your library, but not at the same time.
Nintendo is imposing a bit more ceremony if you want to share digital games each time you share them, but the essential "one device at a time" nature is the same that steam imposes.
(And this ignores the shareable multiplayer aspect, which steam doesn't really do at all.)
I think you can argue if Steam does the whole sharing thing better than Sony or Microsoft. On Playstation and Xbox you can just by one copy of a game, but play it simultaniously with someone else, but it seems like that's limited to one other console (setting the home console).
On Steam you need one copy for every accout playing the game, but you can have 6 accounts in your family, and unlimited devices. Without family share, your own account can only play on one device at a time, but then, why not just make a new Steam account and join a family.
The virtual game cards from Nintendo are also like Steam, since they need one game copy for each player, but also only on one device.
Seems to me like Nintendo is not as good as the others, when it comes to sharing digital games. Sharing physical is of course still possible and easy on console.
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Storage is cheap. Others are being cheap too.
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I think you can argue if Steam does the whole sharing thing better than Sony or Microsoft. On Playstation and Xbox you can just by one copy of a game, but play it simultaniously with someone else, but it seems like that's limited to one other console (setting the home console).
On Steam you need one copy for every accout playing the game, but you can have 6 accounts in your family, and unlimited devices. Without family share, your own account can only play on one device at a time, but then, why not just make a new Steam account and join a family.
The virtual game cards from Nintendo are also like Steam, since they need one game copy for each player, but also only on one device.
Seems to me like Nintendo is not as good as the others, when it comes to sharing digital games. Sharing physical is of course still possible and easy on console.
If we still need to buy one copy of a gamer per simultaneous player,.then the rest of the differences are just ceremony.
Nothing indicates that moving a Nintendo digital card requires uninstalling the game locally. It just, like steam, does a DRM check to see if it's being played elsewhere.
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If we still need to buy one copy of a gamer per simultaneous player,.then the rest of the differences are just ceremony.
Nothing indicates that moving a Nintendo digital card requires uninstalling the game locally. It just, like steam, does a DRM check to see if it's being played elsewhere.
I am not 100% sure on this but i belive that you could buy 1 game and then share it with your family members on switch and everyone (except the owner) could play it at the same time. This is now changed with virtual cards and only 1 person can play a game at any one time. Note that i do only own one switch so I am not a 100% sure about this.
Steam lets anyone in family play anything except playing the same game as the owner iirc. So it is very friendly to sharing whereas just a year ago or something the owner of the game you wanted to "borrow" had to not be playing anything for you to be able to play it.
Nintendo made sharing less friendly. Steam made it more friendly. Am I wrong?
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If we still need to buy one copy of a gamer per simultaneous player,.then the rest of the differences are just ceremony.
Nothing indicates that moving a Nintendo digital card requires uninstalling the game locally. It just, like steam, does a DRM check to see if it's being played elsewhere.
If we still need to buy one copy of a gamer per simultaneous player,.then the rest of the differences are just ceremony.
Like I said, to me, the differences are not as cut and dry, it depends on you situation.
As for the virtual game card, Nintendo actually uses eject, load, and borrow in their article, so it sounds to me it's basically like a physical game you have to move between consoles, not just simple check.
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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.
Not only on Switch 2. There was at least one Tony Hawk Pro Skater game that did this.
If I remember the episode of Guru Larry, the developer noticed their rights to the IP were set to expire, so they went to shit out one last game as fast as possible. They had to get the game published by a certain date, as in discs on store shelves by this date. The game was not going to be ready in time, so they put the tutorial level on the disc to print and distribute it while they finished the game, which would then be a multi-gigabyte download. Meaning that a physical copy of the game is worthless once the servers shut down.
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I am not 100% sure on this but i belive that you could buy 1 game and then share it with your family members on switch and everyone (except the owner) could play it at the same time. This is now changed with virtual cards and only 1 person can play a game at any one time. Note that i do only own one switch so I am not a 100% sure about this.
Steam lets anyone in family play anything except playing the same game as the owner iirc. So it is very friendly to sharing whereas just a year ago or something the owner of the game you wanted to "borrow" had to not be playing anything for you to be able to play it.
Nintendo made sharing less friendly. Steam made it more friendly. Am I wrong?
I think the only thing that's worse with the new Steam system is that everyone has to be in the same country.
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Storage is cheap. Others are being cheap too.
It was, though.
Objectively. This is not an opinion.
Switch 1 carts HAD to be purchased from Nintendo. It wasn't an off the shelf part. They weren´t SD cards priced commercially, they were a specific order that was part of manufacturing a physical copy and stacked up on top of printing labels and paperwork, making cases, shipping them to stores and so on. Margins for physical media are garbage as it is, but Switch carts were significantly more expensive than, say, a PS5 BluRay and they crucially ramped up quickly with size.
Technically the carts were available to higher sizes, but there's a reason you very rarely saw any Switch 1 games with cart sizes bigger than 16 gigs. Basically the more stuff you put in your game the more expensive it was to physically make the boxed copies. Crucially, that is a cost you had to pay whether you sold the carts or not. It was a manufacturing cost.
Look, at this point it's hardly worth it trying to wrap one's head around industrial retailed boxed copy software manufacturing, but trust me, physical Switch games were relatively and absolutely expensive to make in an environment where digital distribution was king and the next most expensive version was dirt cheap optical media.
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It was, though.
Objectively. This is not an opinion.
Switch 1 carts HAD to be purchased from Nintendo. It wasn't an off the shelf part. They weren´t SD cards priced commercially, they were a specific order that was part of manufacturing a physical copy and stacked up on top of printing labels and paperwork, making cases, shipping them to stores and so on. Margins for physical media are garbage as it is, but Switch carts were significantly more expensive than, say, a PS5 BluRay and they crucially ramped up quickly with size.
Technically the carts were available to higher sizes, but there's a reason you very rarely saw any Switch 1 games with cart sizes bigger than 16 gigs. Basically the more stuff you put in your game the more expensive it was to physically make the boxed copies. Crucially, that is a cost you had to pay whether you sold the carts or not. It was a manufacturing cost.
Look, at this point it's hardly worth it trying to wrap one's head around industrial retailed boxed copy software manufacturing, but trust me, physical Switch games were relatively and absolutely expensive to make in an environment where digital distribution was king and the next most expensive version was dirt cheap optical media.
I know. But then Nintendo was making a buck and someone else was being cheap by either not taking the bigger module (to maximize profits) or not optimizing their game sizes like Nintendo often excels at.
I think we're on the same page but just having different thoughts details in this.
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I am not 100% sure on this but i belive that you could buy 1 game and then share it with your family members on switch and everyone (except the owner) could play it at the same time. This is now changed with virtual cards and only 1 person can play a game at any one time. Note that i do only own one switch so I am not a 100% sure about this.
Steam lets anyone in family play anything except playing the same game as the owner iirc. So it is very friendly to sharing whereas just a year ago or something the owner of the game you wanted to "borrow" had to not be playing anything for you to be able to play it.
Nintendo made sharing less friendly. Steam made it more friendly. Am I wrong?
As I understand it, switch 1 digital games are console-bound, but you can migrate your whole console to a new device (such as if your switch breaks.). This was terrible and unfriendly, and why almost all of my family's switch games are physical.
I doubt "share once and let everyone play but the owner" was an intentional promise from Nintendo, but I'd have no trouble believing a tale about their DRM checks leaving open a hole like that.
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I know. But then Nintendo was making a buck and someone else was being cheap by either not taking the bigger module (to maximize profits) or not optimizing their game sizes like Nintendo often excels at.
I think we're on the same page but just having different thoughts details in this.
I don't know that Nintendo was forcing the issue for profit. I also don't know the costs and margins (if any) for Nintendo or who they were working with to get the storage, to be fair. But I have to assume that if Nintendo had signficantly cheaper access to storage and was artificially throttling to everybody else you'd have seen more first party games on larger carts, and that wasn't necessarily the case.
Regardless, any solid state storage was always going to be more expensive than optical storage and scale up with size gradually in a way that optical storage doesn't (until you have to go to a second disk or an additional layer, at least). Cartridges are just inherently riskier and more expensive, even at the relatively modest spec of the Switch 1. Definitely with what seems like competitive speeds in Switch 2.
That doesn't mean one has to like the consequences of it. At the same time I'm not sure I can imagine a realistic alternative for a portable. We're not doing UMD again, so...
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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.
At least there's marking on the packaging so you'd know which ones to avoid getting.
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If we still need to buy one copy of a gamer per simultaneous player,.then the rest of the differences are just ceremony.
Like I said, to me, the differences are not as cut and dry, it depends on you situation.
As for the virtual game card, Nintendo actually uses eject, load, and borrow in their article, so it sounds to me it's basically like a physical game you have to move between consoles, not just simple check.
Ceremony can be a PITA,.no argument here.
But I would be shocked if Nintendo made a digital "eject" erase anything on the local console.
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Ceremony can be a PITA,.no argument here.
But I would be shocked if Nintendo made a digital "eject" erase anything on the local console.
Yeah, it would be insane if the game's also uninstalled, but that second system still needs to be at hand or someone needs to "eject" it. It's a really dumb system.
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Yeah, it definitely puts their overhaul of digital game sharing in perspective. They are ABSOLUTELY shifting to digital. I wouldn't be surprised if the Switch 2 Lite had no cartridge slot at all.
That said, their idea here seems to be that you have a physical cart with a game license in it so you can download the game on multiple consoles and then just swap the key around. That is not a new idea, but it goes to show how frustrated by the limitations of having to ship flash memory with every game they are.
More like, they’ve never been known to pass the savings to the consumer on the digital front. Some games were more expensive on the e shop than physical copies from time to time iirc.
