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Soundwave on 08 September 2025
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Otter said:
Soundwave said:

They can offer "Collector's Editions" of physical games that have the physical cartridge with small print runs, but even that would likely come with some sobering caveats

1.) You as the consumer pay the $16 surchage for the cartridge. You want it, well then you pay for it, don't complain afterwards. That would mean things like a $79.99 game like Madden NFL 26 or Star Wars Outlaws is now $95.99 for you. Basically all your third party games will be $80-$90, have fun with that.

2.) The whole "yeah but at least I got the whole game on the cartridge right!" would also still be wrong. You would still need patches and downloads for most games no different from PS5/XSS disc titles. And for a lot of games 64GB wouldn't be enough, so you'd have to download the extra data to your internal storage or memory. So just understand that physical format does not equal "owning the entire game!" technically. You still have to download stuff and may have to download game data itself if the game is above 64GB.

3.) The game off cartridge is going to perform likely the worst, most people don't understand this because there's only a few games on cartridge thus far, but as we go along they're going to start to understand the cartridge basically has way worse loading times. In some cases the 400MB/sec cartridges may not be fast enough to run the game period so you'll just take the data sitting on the cartridge and move it onto the internal flash storage or an SD Card to play it. Which is dumb, but it is what it is. 

That's fair if you understand all that. The reason Nintendo doesn't really want to push this is because it's fucking confusing for Average Shopper/Grandpa Trying To Buy A Game For Their 11 Year Old type thing.

You see there's a Game Key Card version of Madden NFL or Star Wars Outlaws for $79.99, next to it is a Collectors Physical Cartridge Edition for $95.99 ... it can become a lot. They may not understand what is different and not understand it's the same game just a different format. I guess you could pull it off by differentiating the package and really emphasizing it's a Collectors Edition, but I can see why for Nintendo this wasn't an attractive option.

For preservation this doesn't matter so much. Internet is an aspect of modern gaming but I think it's completely fair to want a physical edition of a game that works without storefront access and that is very possible. There are plenty of games where digital foundary have wanted to test earlier versions on PS5/SX, so play it from disc pre-patches. 

Using cheap/slow speed catridges to hold the game then requiring and install would be as cheap if not cheaper than Switch catridges and developers can absolutely squeeze all of their games into 64GB if their intention is to properly port it to the S2 which does not need 4k assets or the highest quality audio etc.

Gamecards don't massively bother me but I think we have to stop acting like Nintendo literally no choice but this

Well I don't agree, I think Nintendo made the best choice possible for the ecosystem and came up with a good compromise. Game Key Cards lets the Switch 2 and publishers have pricing and profit margin parity with the XBox Series and PS5 physical games, it allows retailers to still sell physical copies of games and get their cut, it allows granpa/grandma to buy a phyiscal gift to give to children, and even allows for physical games to be resold while saving money for the consumer.

I wish Nintendo was this pragmatic back in the day with the N64 which was ruined by fucking cartridges. Yeah I'm sorry I'm a retro gamer but I don't worship cartridges, in Nintendo's case they've done a lot of harm, I was there I remember paying $80-$90 for N64 cartridges in 1996/97/98 etc. The hipster doofus crowd born post-90s nowadays that thinks everyone loved cartridges back in the day, I can tell you that is not the case and paying insane cartridge prices for games back then *sucked*. Watching Nintendo lose all their 3rd party support *sucked*. Having long ass game droughts because of no 3rd parties because of cartridges *sucked*. Cartridges are only workable as a format when they are dirt cheap, the moment they start to get overly expensive is  the moment the same shit stream of problems re-emerges. 

Most people trying to drum up outrage over this issue are ignorant of the facts, they think cartridges just fall out of the sky from the tooth fairy or cost some low amount that can be easily subsidized. Not understanding things like the internal storage of the Switch 2 being much faster means the cartridge has to at least keep up, which means the cartridge then becomes significantly more expensive on top of needing more storage overall. Same reason why yeah back in the day you could easily buy some 4TB SATA HDD for your PS4 for dirt cheap, nowadays a 1-2TB SSD is much more expensive, because SSD is much faster. You have  to pay more for that. Same thing applies to faster cartridges, that speed (which is still much slower than S2's internal storage or SD Card Express, still doesn't come for free. 

The fact is if they allowed $95 games from 3rd parties as a standard, the so-called "rational game community" would've shit their pants 10x worse and complained non-stop about the games being unaffordable and not handled the situation with any maturity whatsoever. That backlash would be worse than the GKC debate IMO, much worse. Even as is watching the continued desperate for click rage baiters still trying to drum up nonsense and being so frustrated that the system is selling great and the general public is not giving a shit about what they're talking about is funny. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 08 September 2025