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potato_hamster on 26 October 2018
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Mnementh said:
potato_hamster said:

Who says a device needs to have physical games, especially if they're going to be prohibitively expensive? If the Switch never contained a cartridge slot, or a touch screen (because it's practically unused by most developers), and had an internal capacity of, say 256 GB then *poof* this problem doesn't exist. If you don't like a lack of physical media, create a "cartridge" that contains a unique identifier that needs to be scanned by the system in order to be downloaded and played, and allow players to tie these codes to their account. Any time the "cartridge" is scanned and linked to another switch, the game becomes disabled on your Switch until it's scanned again to prevent piracy.

That's just one solution, and I'm not even coming close to saying it's what Nintendo should have done. There are dozens of others that Nintendo could have done, but again, chose this one. It's not like Nintendo didn't know a game like GTA V would probably require a 32 GB cartridge. This was always going to be an issue Nintendo knew about from day 1, and they did it anyways.

Physical distribution and representation in shops is still big.

And your idea with the id is basically pretty similar to the games releasing with additional downloads needed, which already happens. But still there is an upside to be offline and play the game. I bought the Switch on release for one reason only: I didn't wanted to wait to play Zelda, because it built up as an extraordinary game (and it was) and I was away for that weekend, so I picked up my Switch on friday and later in the train I started up Zelda for the first time. Impossible, if I had to download the game first.

So because you couldn't immediately play Zelda when you first bought it, the whole system is impractical and not worth it.

lol okay. I'm sure you still would have bought a switch and that game if it did require a download. Let's not pretend a minor inconvenience is a big deal.

Nintendo could just make a "token" cartridge that is the same physical dimensions as a physical cartridge that does nothing more than allow a user to download the entire game and after that's done, play it. There's all kinds of options available for Nintendo within it's current framework as well.

But let's be clear, if a developer really wants their game on the Switch, there's nothing stopping them. If they're on the fence, this is just one more thing that might push them into not making their game on the Switch. It's really not that big of a deal, and this is obvious as there's clear examples of developers already finding ways around it.