At least there's marking on the packaging so you'd know which ones to avoid getting.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Not only on Switch 2. There was at least one Tony Hawk Pro Skater game that did this.
If I remember the episode of Guru Larry, the developer noticed their rights to the IP were set to expire, so they went to shit out one last game as fast as possible. They had to get the game published by a certain date, as in discs on store shelves by this date. The game was not going to be ready in time, so they put the tutorial level on the disc to print and distribute it while they finished the game, which would then be a multi-gigabyte download. Meaning that a physical copy of the game is worthless once the servers shut down.
One of the things I really like about the Switch is that I can actually buy a whole physical game that doesn't need an Internet connection. Sure, I have to check a website first, but I can at least curate my wishlist with games that are complete on cart.
At least them giving it a new name makes choosing games easier, I guess.
There will still be normal cart. With a day one patch or not.
Not that I agree with it, but isn’t this what other consoles have done for about a decade already?
Physical media for games is on its deathbed.
Yes/No. Both Sony and Microsoft have quality control processes to ensure that whatever is published is going to play on first entry of the disc.
That said, publishers use A LOT of workarounds. Day 1 patches to "finish" the game. Download code inserts. And as of recent, mandatory online server check-ins. As far as I'm aware, Nintendo is the only one who allows publishing half the product with required download.
Seems so. Notably, Switch 1 already has games with a similar warning on the box.
They're just giving a name to it.
On one hand, I'm glad they're up front about it (and I'd rather see an even uglier, larger warning on the cover for game key cards). On the other, I hope this isn't a sign that they're legitimizing it or that it'll be more common.
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It's actually not "only on the Switch 2". There were a bunch of Switch one games that only came with a partial set of assets and required a mandatory download to be played.
It sucks, and it's what you get when your physical storage is too expensive and too small, unfortunately.
Storage is cheap. Others are being cheap too.
For that I in part understand the switch module price if that's indeed nvme speed or something.
But switch 1? Not really.
It was, though.
Objectively. This is not an opinion.
Switch 1 carts HAD to be purchased from Nintendo. It wasn't an off the shelf part. They weren´t SD cards priced commercially, they were a specific order that was part of manufacturing a physical copy and stacked up on top of printing labels and paperwork, making cases, shipping them to stores and so on. Margins for physical media are garbage as it is, but Switch carts were significantly more expensive than, say, a PS5 BluRay and they crucially ramped up quickly with size.
Technically the carts were available to higher sizes, but there's a reason you very rarely saw any Switch 1 games with cart sizes bigger than 16 gigs. Basically the more stuff you put in your game the more expensive it was to physically make the boxed copies. Crucially, that is a cost you had to pay whether you sold the carts or not. It was a manufacturing cost.
Look, at this point it's hardly worth it trying to wrap one's head around industrial retailed boxed copy software manufacturing, but trust me, physical Switch games were relatively and absolutely expensive to make in an environment where digital distribution was king and the next most expensive version was dirt cheap optical media.
I know. But then Nintendo was making a buck and someone else was being cheap by either not taking the bigger module (to maximize profits) or not optimizing their game sizes like Nintendo often excels at.
I think we're on the same page but just having different thoughts details in this.
Apologies for maybe answering provocatively basically in the direction of rampant capitalism while agreeing hence triggering your effortful answer of things I know and agree on.
I don't know that Nintendo was forcing the issue for profit. I also don't know the costs and margins (if any) for Nintendo or who they were working with to get the storage, to be fair. But I have to assume that if Nintendo had signficantly cheaper access to storage and was artificially throttling to everybody else you'd have seen more first party games on larger carts, and that wasn't necessarily the case.
Regardless, any solid state storage was always going to be more expensive than optical storage and scale up with size gradually in a way that optical storage doesn't (until you have to go to a second disk or an additional layer, at least). Cartridges are just inherently riskier and more expensive, even at the relatively modest spec of the Switch 1. Definitely with what seems like competitive speeds in Switch 2.
That doesn't mean one has to like the consequences of it. At the same time I'm not sure I can imagine a realistic alternative for a portable. We're not doing UMD again, so...
Now you've got me curious what capacity a UMD form factor could achieve with a UHD Blu-ray laser.
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Not much different from these now day that have only a code.
Did not buy and went to the e-shop.
If this is going to be what Switch 2 offers, I'm fully out
Edit: I checked with a friend. Normal game cartridges are still a thing. One thing that makes them slightly better than digital downloads (albeit still imperfect) is that you can at least trade, sell, and buy them used. Not as good as physical media, but slightly better ownership rights than buying a digital copy.
I don't like the idea of a game that can't be played long after the servers have gone down.
But I'm glad that it can still be traded or sold after purchase unlike what Xbox tried to do.
So these physical copies will only cost $5, right? Lol.
"We want to kill physical game sales forever and we aren't hiding it anymore." - Nintendo, 2025
Actually from the prices I’ve seen online they are about 5 /10 dollars more than digital versions.
Fuck you Nintendo. Because if you lose or damaged the game card, making it unreadable by the card slot, you won't be able to play the game. Due to the game card having the license that allows you to play the game. You'll own nothing and you'll like it, gamer.
That's a really dumb take. That's just the downside of physical media.
The real problem of this is just the same as the digital games. Once the Nintendo switch store inevitably goes offline like the Wii and 3DS, your key card becomes useless e-waste no matter how good you care for it.
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So they essentially stuffed a download code into a physical cartridge to make people feel like they are getting something?
Isn't that needless and wasteful? Isn't it also going to trick unsuspecting people into buying something they think is a physical version of a game but isn't?
They better have a proper label / sticker there.
For collectors, and resell value compared to a paper with a code.
Nintendo's site says the cartridge must always be inserted in order to play the game, and so it is the cartridge that controls the game license.
On that basis it seems likely you could sell/give the cartridge to someone else, after which they can play it and you no longer can - they'd just also have to download it first.
Until the download servers go down and you have a cartridge that's just ewaste
Yes, which is a big part of why, despite allowing transfers, it still sucks.
Thank you for the clarification!
I still don't like it.
Me neither. It's basically a download game but with physical DRM in the form of a cartridge. The age of genuine physical game ownership is toast.
They've been doing that for decades now. Lots of PC games had a box and CD, but the only thing on it was a stub installer to run Steam. Or even if it had the full game, you'd have to download a giant day-one patch to fix all the bugs fixed between the image going gold and the actual release day.
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Had a scare when first hearing this. But somewhere else on the site it does specify this as something like "some physical games", and as quoted in OP they're contrasting here with "regular game cards". So it looks like real game cards will still be a thing.
So far I've seen screenshots of SFVI and Bravely Default boxarts marked as game-key cards.
I've seen box shots for Mario Kart and Donkey Kong that appear to be normal game cards.
Oh gross, that’s enough to end the retro market entirely. When the Switch 2 retires, the entire used game trade goes with it.
You know, unless hShop picks it up.
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