It took four days, but we finally solved the Switch 2 Game Key Card mystery.
When we first reported on Game Key Cards, we pointed out that Nintendo still hadn’t clarified something on their support page. We didn’t know yet if the games that you downloaded would be tied down to your account or not.
As of this writing, the Nintendo support page for Game Key Cards still doesn’t answer this question. Thankfully, however, Nintendo have addressed the question to media directly.
Tetsuya Sasaki, who is general manager of Nintendo’s Technology Development Division, was on hand to answer questions to The Verge. In Sasaki’s words:
“So key cards will start up on the console or system that it is slotted into, so it’s not tied to an account or anything.”
As we argued last week, Nintendo is bringing us to a strange new frontier with this new idea. With Game Key Cards, there is now a physical component to Nintendo’s digital games.
To put this in context, most physical CD games on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X now require that you install the game after inserting the disc. There can still be a technical difference between this and the setup on Switch 2, though it may not make a difference for the end users themselves.
It isn’t that Sony and Microsoft is trying to take away owner rights from their users, or misleading them about their physical games. In many cases, the game really is complete in disc. However, they install the games on console anyway, because it’s the only way to take advantage of the performance of the PlayStation’s or Xbox’s SSD storage.
There are also still cases where the developers choose to put the full game on disc, even if they have to make two discs. That’s what Atlus did for Metaphor ReFantazio’s Xbox Series X port, and what Square Enix did for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on PlayStation 5. For both of these games, you will be able to play without ever logging in online.
The equivalent of that for Nintendo Switch 2, of course, would be regular Switch 2 games. But what all three platforms have in common is that they won’t be able to make physical copies of games that are as big as 100 GB or above.
The time when Xbox 360 would offer multiple discs for you to get the full game no longer exists, because of SSDs. But with the Switch 2’s Game Key Cards, we are now transitioning to an era where digital games can be borrowed or resold.
We’ll still have to wait a little longer to figure out other finer details of this system. For example, if two consoles with different account use the same Game Key Card, can they keep their downloads even if one person isn’t playing it?
Also, can we lend Game Key Card games to each other using the Virtual Game Card system? We bet you already forgot about that one. But we have a feeling Nintendo will make choices and provide options that make their users happy.
