There’s still a lot of confusion about the Switch 2, as Nintendo seems to have difficulty catching up to all the questions gamers and the media have about it. But there are also some thing that’s Nintendo hasn’t been able to clearly communicate, even on their own official channels of communication.
Nintendo has published as support page explaining Game-Key Cards on their website. While it addresses a lot of questions we have, there’s still one big detail that hasn’t been addressed yet.
We’ll start off by quoting Nintendo’s definition:
“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.
After it’s downloaded, you can play the game by inserting the game-key card into your system and starting it up like a standard physical game card.”
So, as Nintendo implies, there will be regular Switch 2 game cards, that are different from Switch 2 Game Key Cards. They’re called key cards because Nintendo wants us to visualize them to be like lock keys. In the same way that you need a key to open a lock, the key card will be needed to play the game.
This is a system that already exists for many games that released ‘physically’ on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Square Enix went out of their way to tout that they released Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on two PlayStation 5 discs, to ensure that players can get the full game on those discs. Sadly, that’s because what they did is now the exception, and not the norm.
Nintendo went on to explain that you’ll need to insert the card onto your Switch 2 to download the game. Afterwards, you won’t need to sign in online to play your Game-Key game, but that’s because of the system Nintendo set up in place.
We know that many game companies choose to implement online logins so that you can play their games. So we should expect that some Switch 2 games, whether they are on Game-Key Cards or not, will have online logins. At least, it’s not mandatory for Game-Key Cards.
The Switch itself has had retail games sold on physical stores, that didn’t actually have a Switch cart, and instead only had game codes, on paper to boot. There will be prominent labels in packaging so buyers can identify Game-Key Cards, so this will turn out to be a more honest way to sell and promote those games to consumers.
And of course, this may be a necessity for certain games that are too big for Switch 2 cartridges, but there’s still one thing that Nintendo hasn’t addressed. Are the games in the Game-Key Cards tied to the physical cartridges? Or do they get added to the user’s account?
Because if it’s the latter, than it’s something of a worse case scenario. You will likely prefer to buy the game directly on the eShop instead of having to insert a cartridge to play the game every single time. However, if it’s the former, than Nintendo has come up with a system that’s more progressive than we have seen before. Gamers will have regained their right to lend or resell their digital games, even if there’s a strange physical component to it.
We imagine the marketing teams at Nintendo and GolinHarris may have gotten too overwhelmed with this launch marketing push to have covered every single detail. But as you can see, the answer to this question is going to make a huge difference as to whether consumers welcome or reject Game-Key Cards. We hope they do notice these inquiries coming up so they can address it as soon as possible.
