Despite being an impressive console and having some great exclusive games to play, the Nintendo Switch 2 has had a few controversies that have marred its launch a little bit. Many have complained about its price, both with the console and with its launch title being $80, but most have ignored that because they seriously want the console and feel it’s “not that bad.” However, the other issue with the Switch 2 is the game key-card system that was put in place so 3rd party publishers could more easily and more cheaply put their titles onto the Switch 2 without having to work on getting everything data-wise onto the Switch 2’s cartridge.
Fans have not been kind to this new option, and have made their voices heard pretty much since the announcement about the key-cards was made. However, they’ve also been showing off how they felt about it in other ways. For example, over on Amazon, if you look at the best-selling Nintendo Switch 2 games on the site right now, you’ll notice that every single one of the titles shown below are physical copy titles and not ones that have key-cards:
To be clear, a big reason for this is that Nintendo is using its own cartridges in full for all 1st party exclusives, and there are a lot of 1st party exclusives on the list. However, the 3rd party games that are on this list are ones that also chose to use the cartridge in full and not go the game key-card route. As we noted earlier today, Cyberpunk 2077 is one such title, and it sold over 75% of its copies in physical form since its arrival on the Switch 2.
So what does this really mean in the long run? It’s hard to say for multiple reasons. The biggest one is that while the Switch 2 has been out a few months now, and fans have been complaining about this since basically launch day, you could argue that The Big N will have “other matters to focus on” versus rectifying this situation. However, Nintendo has made adjustments in the past to please fans, and they will likely want to make the adjustments here to help ensure the Switch 2’s success in the long term.
In the future, they could simply make it so that the key-cards are merely an “option” for developers, but they still need to make full physical copies. Only time will tell what they do.
