Well, it appears the averageNintendo Switchfan’s worst nightmare has come true. When Nintendo announced their new “game key card” along with theSwitch 2, almost everyone was immediately hit with a wave of frustration.
TheSwitch 2 game key cardessentially allows publishers to avoid dumping any data on the cartridge itself.Instead, the physical cartridge you put into your system serves as a key, which you need to insert in order to download and play the game.
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The company co-founder does have a very valid point.
This is a somewhat unsatisfactory solution, as the new Switch 2 cartridges can hold 64 GB of data and accommodate most games. Initially, most fans agreed that this was a warranted solution for games that occupied too much space on traditional cartridges.
However, after a series ofrecent announcementsrevealed what games would be released as game key cards, fans have been utterly disappointed.Games like Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 as key cards? This has to be a joke.
On Reddit,multiple postshave shared batches of Nintendo Switch 2 games announced to be released through game key cards, instead of traditional, storage-based cartridges. On these posts, fans and collectors alike are almost unanimously upset.
Commenter AmandasGameAccountpoints out, “isn’t puyo/Tetris 2 like, 900MB?” Then, one reply from0xfleventy5 points out, “That’s the thing, apparently (feel free to correct me) they only have a 64GB or key cart option. No in between.”
A few sources make this seem very likely, withother small-sized gamesessentially confirming they’re putting their data on the massive 64GB game key cards.This opens up another loophole we hadn’t thought about before: why would games that don’t take advantage of the whole cartridge space spend extra money to do so?
In reality, they won’t, which is why massive AAA titles that exceed the 64GB cartridge storage space, such asCyberpunk 2077, have similar reasons to use game key cards as small games likePuyo Puyo Tetris 2.
Another commenterpoints out the sentiment many collectors seem to have about this whole fiasco:
Yup guess I’ll keep expanding my original switch collection
As a collector myself, I completely agree. Even if buying the game physically gives us a cartridge and case, it won’t replace the feeling that we own the game; it feels like owning a cardboard cutout replacement, so I’d rather buy other games instead.
Why Is Everyone So Frustrated?
Now, a few misconceptions about game key cards we should get out of the way before actually discussing this. Yes, you will be able toswap the cards with friends, resell them, and install key card games across separate systems, and yes, once a game is installed, you can use the card and play it completely offline.
Those misconceptions aside, what we currently see from third-party developers is pretty frightening, for one big reason.These games, which would have been completely available on cartridges in the last generation, are now essentially download-only.
I’ve evencompared thisto buying a Blu-ray for a movie, putting it into a DVD player, and then having the TV open Netflix so you could stream it from there instead. I think it’s the best way to explain why this whole concept is just outright bizarre.
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This is even after selling over one million units in its first 10 days of release.
More importantly, this means that physical media is directly tied to the providers of a downloadable service. Essentially, Nintendo and these third parties are telling us to trust them entirely with the ability to distribute this media, which they may not always be capable of distributing: takeCrew 2, for instance.
As onecommenter stated,“No physical no buy. They will shut off the servers 10 years down the road and you won’t be able to play them.”This is the biggest concern for those interested in acquiring these physical games for the Switch 2.
Unlike a PS4 disk, which often still allows you to play the initial 1.0 release of a game afterservers are offline, game key cards will not allow you to do this. This is the biggest reason collectors who replay old titles decades after launch are especially upset over this system.
Nintendo Is Encouraging Our Worst Habits
There’s one little point to make before I end this. Nintendo, the company trying its bestto fight hackers, modders, and everything in between, is literally encouraging this behavior through this practice.
Why are fans constantly hacking systems like the 3DS, creating illegal platforms to download these games?Since the 3DS e-shop closed,preservation activitieshave been the only way to download many third-party games that were lost with the servers.
As the Switch 2 generation passes, I bet we’ll see loads of content that pesky hackers will be keen to preserve for when the Switch 2 servers eventually close. Even though I would never fully support this activity, one could argue that Nintendo is almost asking for it.
Nintendo Switch 2
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