Sorry. That is blatantly false.

I can still put my Windows 98 StarCraft: Brood Wars CD into my USB external Blu-Ray drive on my modern Windows 11 PC and install and run the game perfectly fine, despite being 27 years old.

Likewise, I can still put my original Age of Empires (1997) CD from 2002 that I got in a Kellogs cereal box and run it perfectly fine from disk.

I have Commander Keen on floppy disk, which I can install from my USB floppy drive, that's a game that released for DOS in 1990, 36 years ago.

These are games that are older than Steam. And will continue to be perfectly operational for years to come.

PC is a platform that is contiguous, it doesn't have "Generational breaks" the same as console, besides OS changes, which can have work around's for backwards compatibility (I.E. DosBox), which exists regardless if it's digital or physical.

Isn't that all just via software emulators? No native playing? 

I did not know that. Thanks for making me hate 343 even more. 

I am not getting in this is argument with you given our prior discussions and your tendency toward inflexible black and white thinking. 

But no it isn't blatantly false that I can more easily play a digital version of games released in 2004 on most current hardware than it is to play a disc version that depends on me accessing an optical drive in the year 2026. I am not carrying a fricken external optical drive everywhere I go with my laptop.

And that is without considering compatibility issues that Steam streamlines and reduces.

This is my last post on this topic in response to you. Already seen where it is going with language like "blatantly false." 

You are both sort of right. On one hand he can play his physical games. On the other hand playing them via a software emulator instead of a period-correct PC is like slapping an original NES cart into one of those crappy $25 NES clones that retrobit or hyperkin puts out. It's just not authentic or accurate anymore. Might as well run an emulator with a digital rom, because without the original hardware or an fpga solution it's not going to run right. 

I have zero issues with gamekey cards, yeah it sucks to have to download a game, but GKC give NS2 a chance to have games that they normally could not. Lets be honest. Cartridges are slow and limited on space. If there was no GKC would some third party big games even bother coming to the NS2?

You already pointed at least one issue you have with it, being having to download the full games, tho.

They'd probably come, just as a digital only / code-in-box release. So I'm glad that they exist and I have the option to get a GKC instead of Digital.

You mean besides forcing you to rely on an internet connection to download a game that you own in a physical cart, pricing them just as expensive as if it was on a real cart with actual storage capacity despite being much cheaper for the publisher to manufacture, having to pray for the publisher to not remove your game from the eShop at any point and having to insert the cart every time you want to play despite the game being downloaded on your console? Yeah, I can't think any reason as to why they are so controversial.

The point about removing X game from the eShop is not talked enough. GKC defenders will say that even if the eShop stops selling games, you'll be able to download the games you already own. Well, what happens with GKCs if the product itself is removed from the eShop for whathever reason? It's not unheard of and even Nintendo has pulled that off sometimes (Mario Bros. 35 not too long ago for example) and if it happens you will most likely end up with a nice and useless GKC that will show up on your menu when inserted, but won't be able to download its game.

Really, GKCs are the worst solution ever to the storage problem on handheld devices. Most publishers (even Nintendo) could have easily used Switch 1 cards of high capacities (in 2026 they are probably not very expensive) instead of empty cards. If loading speeds are the issue, just make the console install the game internally FROM THE CARD. That way you bypass the need of an internet connection and an external source. As for very large games like FF VII Remake, for the love of God: compress the fucking game. Why the hell does that game weigh almost the same as the PC/PS5 version? It has plenty of pre-rendered video cutscenes (some are disguised very well as real time in-engine) that, if compressed, could probably put the file size in the 64 GB territory.

If we think about all of this a little bit, we realize that there are actual solutions that would allow publishers to offer a not that expensive physical solution, and that the only reason GKCs exist is publishers (and Nintendo's) greed. By using GKCs, they reduce the manufacturing costs significantly (how much storage does a GKC hold? 1GB?), they don't have to put up the effort to actually compress and optimize their games to fit the physical media and they can charge exactly the same price as if they were actually offering a real physical game. In exchange, the customer gets all the negatives that come with it and not a single positive thing.

In some cases sure, not all. There's no way Kiwami 1/2 would have been £25 on a cartridge. Bravely default was also a cheap release iirc. There's also the case of R-Type being announced as a keycard and then them changing to cart and putting the price up. Really though releasing on Keycard probably isn't any cheaper than releasing on Blu-ray for PS5/Xbox.

Nintendo should add support for installing from cartridge though you are right. The X360 let you install any game to the internal to speed up load times and it'd be great to see the same here. And yes mandatory installs for the games that really need faster data streaming to work.

"The point about removing X game from the eShop is not talked enough." That's because the ability to download a game you have paid for being taken away has as of yet never happened afaik.

You mention Mario 35 but that was for one f2p and secondly an always online game that they took the servers down for. Games that can be played offline can still be redownload and played even after the title is delisted from the store.

It will happen eventually but who can say when. As of now you can still access your digital libraries from 7th gen consoles.