Nintendo Is “Acting To Protect The Industry” With Switch 2 Game Key Cards, Says Ex-Capcom Composer

“Rivals find it simpler to jump on the bandwagon once Nintendo leads the way.”

• penned by Damien McFerran Yesterday, 3:10pm

Ever since Switch 2 hit shelves, the hottest flashpoint has been Game Key Cards – tangible tokens that merely unlock a download.

Detractors label the cards buyer-hostile, and Japan’s National Library has ruled them unfit for archival storage—hardly surprising, since the card itself stores zero actual gameplay data.

Yet a Ubisoft employee pointed out recently that studios favour these tokens because they shrink delivery times. Now veteran composer and ex-Capcom creator Masakazu Sugimori has weighed in on Nintendo’s behalf (hat-tip, Automaton).

Posting online, Sugimori notes that tangible goods rarely outlive their digital twins:

“Do non-digital objects truly last forever? Hardly. Anything physical eventually degrades. Data, once online, usually faces no natural expiration.”

Critics counter that downloads vanish the moment storefronts delist them; plenty of recent titles have already disappeared—a snag in Sugimori’s logic. Still, if servers stayed live indefinitely, digital copies would indeed outlive discs or carts that crack, warp, or rot.

He adds that Key Cards act as “a bulwark against bootlegging,” because nothing can be ripped directly off the token (though the installed console files remain fair game for pirates). The format also spares publishers the gamble of over-pressing plastic inventory; printing a scratch-card code costs pennies compared with pressing, packaging, and shipping a cartridge.

“These steps look to me like shields for the whole games sector,” he sums up. “Call it idealistic, but when Nintendo moves first, the rest of the field can trail behind without as much backlash.”

Many observers chalk the scheme up to sheer avarice, yet Sugimori rejects that motive. “Does a firm already drowning in profits need extra pennies? Nintendo could halt sales tomorrow and still bankroll every employee’s retirement—its war chest is almost comical.”

Sugimori scored Ace Attorney and Viewtiful Joe while at Capcom, departing in 2007 with colleagues Atsushi Mori, Kento Hasegawa, and Masato Kouda to found DesignWave.