Talking Point: Will You Be Buying Any Game-Key Card Switch 2 Games?

The death of physical media has been looming for decades now, essentially since the internet made digital downloads a viable option for purchasing games – or purchasing your licences to play games. While Nintendo got involved relatively quickly (for Nintendo, at least) with WiiWare and Virtual Console digital downloads, there’s still always been a strong link between this particular platform holder and the physical article.

And it’s not just the need to provide stocking-fillers for parents and grandparents of a younger-skewing demographic; perhaps Nintendo’s general preference for carts is also a factor. Cartridges have a more substantial, chunky physicality compared to discs – and even when the company went for optical media, the GameCube’s cute 8cm discs and the curved edges of Wii U games injected some personality. Carts, with their unique forms and chip-filled innards, somehow feel more than just a blank medium with some data burned in. Just me?

Conversely, you’ve never been able to buy a physical Xbox or PlayStation game on anything but a disc. Sony and Microsoft gamers also got used to enormous downloads supplementing whatever came in the box long ago. The lightning-fast solid-state memory on PS5, for example, requires all software to be downloaded to the hard drive anyway.

Console games haven’t been actually running off discs for a generation, but you still need those discs in the drive to unlock the damn licence. In effect, then, Game-Key Cards simply represent Nintendo catching up with the competition and hitting familiar roadblocks, although the format — game cards versus discs — and the portability of the Switch somehow makes the situation feel more absurd. At least discs might come with a token few gigabytes of the game before initiating the enormous Day One patch download.

As mentioned, for Nintendo — more than any other platform holder, perhaps — it’s still imperative to have boxed product on the shelves come holiday season, so it’s necessary to maintain a healthy working relationship with retailers. The anger and disappointment surrounding Switch 2 retail pre-orders is understandable, although it’s also hard to see how Nintendo itself could improve the situation while also keeping those retailers on side. There’s zero impetus for Best Buy, Target, et al to upgrade their crumbling websites when demand for the product keeps people glued to their devices for multiple hours. But that’s another talking point.

For physical die-hards, going digital equals surrender. It’s proper rock-and-hard-place stuff for a lot of people.

Third-party publishers, too, want their products on store shelves so that relatives can pick up a game for Little Tommy’s birthday. The person buying the thing may not know or care if the cart in the box is nothing more than a licence check. It’s still unclear what size options Nintendo is offering for Switch 2 carts — although the maximum is reportedly 64GB. Assuming their game could even fit on that cart, a print run of those will be much more costly than the 8GB equivalent. Even without the current economic pressures, it’s obvious why Switch 2 publishers are jumping on the game-key card wagon at launch.

Every announced physical release from Sega, Capcom, Konami, and most other third-party publishers on the system is a key-card. At the time of writing, Nintendo itself, CD Projekt, and Marvelous are putting out carts which contain the actual game data, and the latter two have been out there specifically highlighting that, yes, all the data will be on their cartridges.

The vitriol online around this approach is entirely understandable given the perilous state of things for people devoted to physical releases. And when you’ve got firms like Limited Run offering a $250 Collector’s Edition of Raidou — which ludicrously comes with a game-key card (sold for $50 on its own, remember), plus a soundtrack CD, a bunch of cardboard, and assorted tat, for $250!!! — it’s no wonder that people are calling for boycotts of any game-key card release.

For many of us, the realities and conveniences of digital purchases — not to mention the uptick in eShop sales as the Switch generation progressed — led to a digital migration this gen. Those microSD cards filled up fast, but having instant access to your entire library is a major boon with a portable. The ability to resell these game-key cards is an advantage, but the caveats are enormous – as are the costs when you have to factor additional memory into your game budget.

There’s 256GB of storage on Switch 2 – less once you factor in the necessary firmware. Hitman alone will take up 61GB according to the box. When games like Call of Duty arrive on Switch 2, they’re unlikely to be smaller than that; in fact, they’ll probably be 100GB+ monsters. If the idea of constantly archiving and redownloading games doesn’t appeal, you will very quickly need more space.

But what’s the alternative to these ‘pretend’ game carts? For physical die-hards, going digital equals surrender. It’s proper rock-and-hard-place stuff for a lot of people, and that’s without even mentioning the millions of gamers who don’t have brilliant internet, or the barriers this throws up for preservation.

It’s also the direction that the industry — and all media — have been heading for a long, long time. The alternative seems to be just walking away from playing modern video games. Are players really invested enough in the physical fight to do that?

You’ll find plenty of people online who’ll talk that talk (or proudly proclaim to be flying the Jolly Roger), but whether they’ll have the conviction to just go back to BOTW when the new Zelda is announced, or content themselves with FromSoft’s back catalogue when the next proper Souls instalment comes along, remains to be seen.

For many, the game-key card approach presents a conundrum with no workable solution, just a lot of dissatisfaction and upset. Even developers find it “disheartening”.

What are your intentions when it comes to these game-key cards? Are they better than a pure digital download? Better than code-in-a-box if you’re just looking to stock your shelves alongside your proper physical games? Do you even see them as a problem? Let us know in the poll and comments below.