Remember when you use to buy a Switch game and the game would atleast partially before updates, be on the cartridge?
Well imagine buying a key cart for your Switch2 and, you have to download the game from their servers from scratch. The game doesn’t download itself to the cartridge, but onto your Switch 2 consoles internal memory.
Now imagine getting a bad update and trying to delete some data including the update, just to play with the original games version.
physical Key cart games are treated just like they are digital which means you can’t revert the update.
Even if the game is saved onto your Switch’s internal you cannot legally play a key cart game, without the key carts inserted in your switch.
The game data is not stored on the key cartridge but on your switch’s internal memory.
$80 $70 Nintendo Switch 2 carts
Everything has pros and cons. Currently there are physical collector editions, that don’t actually have a game on disc, just a download code. Similarly, some collections are sold with one game on disk, rest a downloadable code. These codes are one-use only and can’t be sold again.
Game key carts solve that problem. Instead of just putting a one-time code, they can use game-key cart, which people can use multiple times.
As for games installing on internal memory instead of the cart, yes, it works like all other downloads. The game that have partial data on disc, or any update that’s downloaded. Or every single PS / Xbox game because they can’t run directly from optical drive, so you have to copy the full data, download the updates, and still can’t play without the disc.
You shouldn’t think of a “digital” game. Those who want digital will just download digital. You should think of it as a physical game that has very little data on cart and rest is all a download (like Doom: Dark Ages shared below, just 85MB on disk, rest is a download)
The biggest con IMO is that some companies who were willing to release a cart with full or partial data may decide to go for the game-key cart since it’s a official thing now, and average people buying it may not see any difference. So, I hope the collectors vote with wallet and ask the publishers to release full game on disk instead of using game-key carts.
So it’s a digital game with a physical lockout? All the problems of digital AND The problems of physical, with no true upside from either, how great!
The (only) advantage of Game Carts over digital is that you can resell them and lend them to people outside of your (digital) family.
The point is that you can still treat it like a physical game. So there are upsides in that you can borrow it to your friends or resell it.
If it is a game that gets updated often or requires updates to even play it (multiplayer games) then having the game data on the card is next to worthless anyways and just makes publishing the game more difficult because they can’t start manufacturing the cards until the game is 100% ready.
Nintendo’s audience goes for physical much more than the other consoles, much easier swapping cards than dealing with family sharing, a lot of their adult users collect games, and generally Nintendo games hold their value much more so being able to resell is important. So this is a compromise between what their users want and what they need for modern game development.
Slippery slope for sure if they start doing the same with single player games but there are valid reasons for them to do this, and the alternative is they just start forcing everyone to download all of their games which is even worse. MIG switch would never have been an issue for them if there just weren’t game card slots to begin with.
Of course end users should assume the store is going to get shutdown someday and their games will be inaccessible at that time. Nintendo needs to shutdown those stores so that a couple of generations later they can sell everyone the same games for the second/third/fourth time.
That’s not all I wrote, but yeah, I just shared my opinion and you don’t have to agree with any of it. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it.
It’s the important bit. You’re trying to make these sound good when they’re literally the worst of both worlds, you weird Nintendo fanboy
How are they worst of the digital world? No one who wants a digital will buy game-key cart, they will just go to e-shop and buy / download the game. This will effect the ones who buy physical though, and I did mention that.
Anyways, I don’t mind discussing my point of view, as I said, it’s my opinion, you can agree or disagree, and maybe my logic is flawed, but if you just want to ignore that and run away with one sentence, that’s also your right, and I can’t do anything about it. 🙂
I bought the BG3 deluxe edition, which promises game on disk, soundtrack, etc.
They delivered on everything except…the game disk is 26mb. It’s a branded steam installer for you to install so you can use the steam key they provided in the box. I have never before been so disappointed in a ‘physical’ game purchase.
I haven’t bought physical in a while, but hearing about such stories more and more. It sounds specially annoying when they do that with collectors edition. These are their hard-core fans / customers, at least don’t short-change them.