Physical cartridge are literally the worst way to play. They're the most expensive format by a mile and they offer the slowest speed (internal flash storage is faster and even SD Card Express is significantly faster).
If Nintendo wanted to have speeds that could match internal flash storage, you'd be talking about $30 cartridges ... get over carts, they suck. I get nostalgia and collecting and all this, but it's time to move on, carts don't even have the game speed anymore, the Star Wars Outlaw developer said it straight up the cartridge is not fast enough for the game.
Game Key Cards are a fair compromise for like parents/grandparents that still want to give kids a physical gift and keeping retail partnerships for Nintendo while keeping the price of Switch 2 third party games in line with PS5/XSS pricing ... otherwise the games would be $16+ more across the board on Switch 2 because the cartridge costs $16 (even for the shitty ass slow speed).
People don't understand all of the dynamics at play, they think you can just pull a high speed cartridge out of your ass that costs only $2-$3, that's not how it works.
