Game Key Cards 1 Year In

[Spike0503]

JRPGfan said:

The big reason people dislike them is because 10-15 years down the line, Nintendo might not have the download options ect.
Meaning the key card becomes juist plastic junk, at that point.

However the counter argument is this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY16S5x3dHc

The same thing happens with games that are on the Cartridge as well.
New firmware makes it so, you cannot play a offline game, if your system knows that there are patches to it, without updates.
Essentially bricking the game, if you cannot download the patch (which 20years down the line, you might not be able too).

*edit:
This is bad for game preservation.
Afaik, Xbox does the same thing.... I think only the PS5 of the 3 consoles actually values allowing you to play a game, where you have the intire game on disc, if in future say there is no way to download patches ect.

Interesting. This is the first time I've heard of this. I still think cartridges are the better deal (never gonna buy a GKC) though now I might reconsider getting games on PS5 instead since I know they don't have that problem.

Someone in the comments of that video talks about a possible solution though. If you factory reset your console, the games won't need to update since you'll be wiping your console's database clean. Plus, the games only need to update once you have updated them, so, in theory, if you play the games without updates (most of the ones I've played play fine regardless) you won't have this issue.

I'm aware this is a highly inconvenient solution but at least you have the option in a theoretical future where Nintendo shuts down the servers.

Oh and some physical games come complete with all the updates, thus not suffering from this issue at all. I found this database of Switch/SW2 cartridges some time ago on reddit. I think it's highly useful for this topic.