Nintendo’s Doug Bowser: Game-Key Cards Are For 3rd Parties To Bring “Deeper And Larger” Games Onto The Switch 2

Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser has clarified the company’s thinking behind introducing Game-Key Cards.

IGN shared this quote from Bowser in a recent interview:

In the immediate future, physical games are still a key part of our business, and we value our relationships in particular with our retailers, and want to make sure we have products available for them to sell to their consumers.

When you look at Game-Key Cards, for us, our goal with Nintendo Switch 2 – similar to what we were able to accomplish on Nintendo Switch – is to have the broadest and deepest library of content we possibly can.

And that includes our publishing partners. Game-Key Cards are a way that our publishing partners are able to bring more content onto the platform, deeper and larger, more immersive content.

The discourse around Game-Key Cards has focused on a narrative that Nintendo chose not to support physical games anymore. Bowser once again went on record that they will continue to sell their own games complete in Switch 2 Game Cards in the future.

So it’s really important that we interpret all this information correctly. Nintendo did not choose to ‘betray’ gamers who buy physical because they want games in complete physical form. Nintendo has committed to making their games around the 64 GB size limit of the Switch 2 Game Cards. They came up with Game-Key Cards as a reaction to the phenomenon of developers selling Switch games in retail stores as codes in boxes.

This doesn’t rule out the possibility that Nintendo and their Game Card manufacturer, Macronix, could work together to make higher capacity Game Cards in the future. If there’s enough demand from gamers, they may introduce Cards that can fit in games 100 GB and above in a few years. We do worry that the potentially higher costs of manufacturing these Game Cards could also mean higher prices for just those Cards.

But for now, if you want to play third-party games on the Switch 2, you’ll have to choose between digital downloads associated with your account, and Game-Key Cards, which will also require downloads, but aren’t connected to your account and can be resold. There’s a huge possibility those Game-Key Cards will no longer be useful someday, but we’ll have to wait and see if the market will take to them. This strange new category of hybrid physical/digital games is, if we’re being honest about it, innovative. But like any new innovation, we can’t predict if they will catch on or not.