4mo ago

Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card Overview

en-americas-support.nintendo.com

Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card Overview | Nintendo Support

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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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.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  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.
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.
- Now you've got me curious what capacity a UMD form factor could achieve with a UHD Blu-ray laser.
  
  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.
- Storage is cheap. Others are being cheap too.
  For that I in part understand the switch module price if that's indeed nvme speed or something.
  But switch 1? Not really.
  
  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.
If this is going to be what Switch 2 offers, I'm fully out
Edit: I checked with a friend. Normal game cartridges are still a thing. One thing that makes them slightly better than digital downloads (albeit still imperfect) is that you can at least trade, sell, and buy them used. Not as good as physical media, but slightly better ownership rights than buying a digital copy.
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.
At least them giving it a new name makes choosing games easier, I guess.
- There will still be normal cart. With a day one patch or not.
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.
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.
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?
- 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.
  
  Until the download servers go down and you have a cartridge that's just ewaste
  
  Thank you for the clarification!
  I still don't like it.
- 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.
  
  Nothing new here. PS3 games were famous for requiring an install from the optical media to the internal drive first, and then also downloading some mandatory major update before running. The role of the physical media was mostly symbolic.
- They better have a proper label / sticker there.
  For collectors, and resell value compared to a paper with a code.
- One thing I don't see people mentioning is that Nintendo Switch 1 game cartridges had 32gb of storage. We don't know about regular Switch 2 cartridge storages, but they've already announced games like Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy that are much bigger than that. Add in the fact that Switch 2 promises games in 4k (when docked) and there's a very decent chance that these game-key cartridges exist because some games wouldn't fit in cartridges and would otherwise have to be digital-only or not be on this console at all.
  
  I don't think there is anything stopping nintendo from making 64GB or larger cartridges except the cost.
So these physical copies will only cost $5, right? Lol.
"We want to kill physical game sales forever and we aren't hiding it anymore." - Nintendo, 2025
- Actually from the prices I’ve seen online they are about 5 /10 dollars more than digital versions.
At least there's marking on the packaging so you'd know which ones to avoid getting.
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 looks like 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.
Not much different from these now day that have only a code.
Did not buy and went to the e-shop.
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.
Fuck you Nintendo. Because if you lose or damaged the game card, making it unreadable by the card slot, you won't be able to play the game. Due to the game card having the license that allows you to play the game. You'll own nothing and you'll like it, gamer.
- That's a really dumb take. That's just the downside of physical media.
  The real problem of this is just the same as the digital games. Once the Nintendo switch store inevitably goes offline like the Wii and 3DS, your key card becomes useless e-waste no matter how good you care for it.
  
  Question. Did you open OPs link? Because all you're doing is buying a license on cartridge. You have to download the game and you need to insert the cartridge to play the game. Nintendo managed to figure out a way to add all the inconveniences of physical media to digital only games.
- Isn't that how all physical media works?
  
  No. You have to download the game and need the cartridge to play it.
Many Ubisoft games and Activision games on the Switch 1 were sold like this.
- 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.

66 comments