A begrudging defense of Nintendo’s “Game-Key cards” for the Switch 2

And there are real concerns and annoyances that will come with Game-Key cards. Normally, the physical copy of a game is playable right out of the box—or, at most, after downloading patches that are a fraction of the size of the entire game. This saves time, and it saves internal storage space. That’ll be particularly important if you’re trying to stretch the console’s 256GB of internal storage and avoid buying a new microSD Express card.

Now, every time you put the game into a new console, you have to download the whole game again. That’s true if you have multiple Switches in your family, or if you’re passing the card to a friend to play, or if you delete the game to make room for a new one. And you lose the it-just-launches flexibility of downloadable titles since you need to insert a game key card to be allowed to play the game you’ve downloaded.

And then there’s the (very) long-term argument. In 2023, Nintendo shut down the online servers for its Wii U and 3DS consoles. At that point, it had been years since either console had seen a new game, and it’s almost certain that the vast majority of them are spending most of their time gathering dust or tucked into a drawer. But for game preservationists, it meant that a whole lot was breaking: online play for either system, game update distribution for either system, and downloadable games and DLC for either system.

In a hypothetical future where the Switch servers are also shut down, a “real” game card is still a playable game. A Game-Key card becomes a hunk of plastic.

… but I prefer this to the alternative

But let’s be honest with ourselves. Physical game releases have been dying out gradually for years, a product of the natural evolution of technology and the fact that it costs more to manufacture and ship a physical object than it does to provide server bandwidth for a game download.