It seems we are in agreement for the most part; though to add a note on the bolden line, as far as I’m aware, so long as you purchased the DLC, you can still redownload your 3DS Fire Emblem DLC content. Same goes for any digitally purchased titles on console. Additionally, physical media doesn’t last forever. In fact, the day your NSW cartridge stops functioning could come sooner than the day Nintendo no longer allows you to redownload your digitally purchased games.

And it is for this reason I don’t see GKC as being any worse than merely purchasing digital. And I’d imagine if Nintendo (or any game dev) stopped supporting the ability for a consumer to redownload digitally purchased media, unless through a subscription or license, there would be consumer protection laws enforced to make sure your ownership is protected at least in the very far foreseeable future.

In this case I stand corrected. Indeed, I will try to download the DLC for Fates then when I replay the game, thanks for the info

And it's true physical media don't last forever which is a good argument in favor digital

The issue with digital is not the digital media per see, but the lack of ownership and the fact you are restricted to whims of the market. It's a structural issue, mostly. Consoles being closed platforms make everything just harder to preserve. Steam also suffers from the same issue because of the DRM

In this case, GOG is much better. Once you download the file, the file is yours. You can save it on discs, drivers, cloud, etc

I really wish we had legal precedent for digital ownership. If you litigate to get life-long access to your digital games I'm sure most judges (at least in my country) would give you the rights, because in Brazil laws came before user agreements when defining what is valid, but it's very buzzy work 

I wasn't very excited about this game. Now I'm even less excited for it. -_-

None of those points have been debunked and what I'm saying is actually coming more and more to fruition. If Nintendo even themselves is starting to use GKCs for some of their own titles... the writing here is pretty clearly on the wall. 

To be honest this is *worse* than even I predicted, I thought at least Nintendo themselves would stay steadfast on releasing all their own games on physical cartridge for at least this generation before ditching them for Switch 3, the Switch 2 is not even half a year old and they're already moving some of their own franchise games to GKC only. 

That doesn't bode well for physical at all. Costs of higher speed storage (SSDs) have skyrocketed the last year or so, wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo is looking at even higher costs for their cartridge manufacturing. Companies like Western Digital have seen their stock price go through the roof because storage is critical to AI infrastructure, but that means the price of those components goes up across the board. 

None of this explains why Nintendo should have gone digital only as you suggested. Having games on fast/expensive cartridges + GKC as options is obviously preferable to forcing digital only. You're acting like cartridges+GKC availability is worse for some reason, like deleting physical altogether would somehow cause less outrage lol.

You also keep ignoring or trivializing the "Game Install Card" argument. Nintendo made a mistake by going GKC instead of GIC (which would have functioned exactly like a PS5 Bluray, and cost a lot less to manufacture than fast cartridges).

I mean, this is a 2nd party game with Pokemon/Nintendo as co-publishers. It kinda comes as a surprise but also the involvement of the Pokemon company makes this not so surprising.

At the end of the day, you could rule this out as an experiment of theirs to see how the buying demographic for physical will react to it. (Badly, most likely)

Yet in the meantime, Hyrule Warriors AoI is getting it's game on full physical cartridge, therefore this is an outlier moment and not a new norm for future games like some are fear mongering here.

As for the GKC debate, I'm really not giving with the concept and it's applications but since I loathe digital purchase for game I can get physically, GKC remains the only option for my third party purchase in some cases (Hello Square Enix/ Octopath Traveler 0 with no upgrade path ...)

I was pretty excited for this game because I really liked DQB2, so I'm sure they could make the progression fun and exciting, but digital only really makes me reconsider getting it. I'm trying to hold off on getting an Express SD card for as long as possible

If only digital games were cheaper than physical

Idk, is this a game that people really want a physical copy of? I don’t like no physical, but this makes sense for something they’re trying to specifically target casuals with

I think part of the issue is that it looks like it would be one of those throwaway 20 buck or f2p pokemon spin offs, but on top of having no physical, it’s 70$.

^This. It's basically a $40 game that they are charging $70 for. I wasn't sure if I would pick it up and was expecting review scores around 70 to 80 or so. GKC just solidified me skipping it, because $70 is a lot to ask for this kind of game.