I think it's silly that the conversation on preserving games revolves around hardware. The hardware is irrelevant. It's about the right to create digital backup for personal use. Whether the game is downloaded or burned on a disc, it's just software.

The main problem used to be about piracy, but I think now it's really about making games as a service (even if they're not online for gameplay) because it allows more forms of monetization. The conversation should be about making games into a digital product that you can download and own the files. Piracy still happens anyway, and maybe this could make companies solve the problem differently, like only allowing digital backup for trusted players.

I get that Switch 2 games need faster storage, and that makes the traditional model of running games directly from the cart prohibitively expensive, but they could have just copied the Xbox/Playstation model of shipping physical games on slow media (Blurays in their case) and then having a mandatory installation step which copies the data to the fast internal SSD before you start playing. That way you're not entirely dependent on online services to play a physical game.

In the computer games industry pretty much everything has been download only for some time as the assets are too large for DVD and BD never caught on for PC. Places like GOG provide unrestricted offline installers but the majority are provided via a storefront like Epic or Steam.

The worst case scenario for preservationists is for games to become a streaming service via cloud gaming, which publishers may like since it pretty much prevents piracy and allows them to charge a monthly fee rather than a one time license fee. For movies and music streaming exclusives aren't a new thing and improvements in network latency and bandwidth are making game streaming more and more viable.

> Even when a cartridge does contain data on day one of release, games are so often patched, updated and expanded through downloads that the cart very often loses its connection to the game, and functions more like a physical copy protection dongle for a digital object

From preservation's perspective even the day-one release, no matter how buggy it is, is worth preserved. The speedrun community, for instance, often need to fix on an exact version of the game to compete, and a physical copy (implying a pinned revision) is often easier to agree on.

There are exceptions to this, when the day-one release is not playable. It is the trend happening in the software industry -- release early, even if it is literally unusable, because we can push a patch via the network -- that is disheartening.

With physical games, you're tied to how long your console and cartridge physically last.

With digital games, you're tied to how long the console's e-store lasts, which is guaranteed to be sunset.

Eventually I couldn't justify buying the console version of a game that I was willing to play on Steam.

> So far the vast majority of third-party Switch 2 games are Game-Key Cards, with only a few exceptions such as Cyberpunk 2077 and the Western version of Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion.

AFAIK this is only in Japan. The Japanese Switch 2 experience is going to be vastly different from the international one in ways the average Japanese player won't immediately notice, because Japan's economy is in the toilet and Nintendo is engaging in several desperation moves to avoid selling a product nobody living on a Japanese wage can afford.

If you're wondering what I mean by "vastly different": the Switch 2 you can buy at Yodobashi or Bic Camera is going to be region- and language-locked to Japanese only. You will only be allowed to sign in with a Japanese account, which can only be funded with Japanese credit cards. You can't change the system language to anything other than Japanese, and any games that rely on the system language will consequently be locked to Japanese, too. In exchange, the system is $100 cheaper[0].

Switch 1 also had Game Key Cards, but they weren't branded this way. Instead they were games that required a software update containing the rest of the game in order to work, with an appropriate warning on the box about this. For the record, Switch 1 updates could be downloaded peer-to-peer, and I'm assuming this carries forward for Switch 2, but I have no idea if Game Key Cards work the same way.

[0] If you live in Japan and want an international-spec Switch 2, that's an exclusive My Nintendo Store item that costs the same as it does in the US.

I guess I'm the odd duck with a switch that has never been online. It sounds like the switch2 isn't for me.

Sad but I don't want another device that wants to be more than it is, I basically want an updated version of my gameboy from the 90s and that's it. No downloads, no network, no social, just a game you can quietly play anywhere when you have a bit of time, no nonsense

It's an imperfect solution to a real problem—Nintendo wants to use cartridges instead of discs for some good reasons, some not-so-good reasons—but the costs per cartridge are too high for cartridges big enough to hold modern games.

But you can look at it as a transferable license to otherwise digital games, and that's not bad. A console with entirely (or almost entirely) digital games would have no used game market, and that sucks both for sellers (which I don't do), and buyers (which I happily do).

It would be nice if there was some legal protection for the buyer that, by selling a physical license, that Nintendo be required to make the download itself available for some time period > 20 years.

> “seeing Nintendo do this is a little disheartening”, adding: “You would hope that a company that big, that has such a storied history, would take preservation a little more seriously.”

I don't see why preservation (outside their own archives) would be a goal for Nintendo. The reality seems to be the opposite: They'd like the branding and memory of old games to be preserved, but please not the game itself - because then they can re-release it for every new system as a "remastered" variant.

As someone who’s been collecting games since the early 2000s, it’s tough watching physical media slowly vanish—it changes how we archive and experience history. While digital is convenient, it doesn’t guarantee long-term access. I’ve turned to sites like https://rickyscasino.org/ lately—not for gaming, but to stay updated on tech trends and how digital systems are evolving, especially in entertainment and transaction models. You can’t play there, but there’s a lot of useful info on how things are shifting. This kind of move by Nintendo feels like a step further from ownership toward controlled access, and it raises fair concerns for preservationists. At this point, maybe the best approach is to support emulation efforts and archive communities to help keep gaming history alive and accessible.

There are a couple of elephants in the room here.

Firstly is the proliferation of games and their quality. Anyone can make a new game, given an engine and a few art assets. It doesn't take a lot of capital or know-how to release a new game. Therefore, there's a glut of games on the market, from high to low quality, and there are far more than any rational human could ever purchase or play. This was a problem from Day One: When I purchased my Atari 2600 console (or rather my parents purchased for me) my sister and I quickly filled up a 50-cartridge shelf with games where we barely even played or scratched the surface. They were disposable! When we got a Commodore 64, there were more 3rd parties on the market, making games we never heard of, and these games were so deep and thick that one of them could've kept us occupied for 6 months, but still we chewed through them as fast as we could afford.

Secondly, aren't most all the games now oriented around MMOG "communities" and multi-player-based? That makes preservation practically impossible. If you've not only got to keep the game servers running, but you've also got to preserve the community that goes with them... well, forget it. Gamers grow up, their tastes change; they move on.

I enjoyed a few games, years ago, that basically turned into ghost-town servers. Many of us were so tenacious and dedicated to that specific game as it was, yet the new influx of players dried up, and nobody could prevent that from happening. Every newbie was a ban-evader. Every rich opponent was paying real $$$ just to stay competitive. Our precious game jumped the shark and we couldn't let it die. But die they must. I propose that most games are not worth preserving. Perhaps games should be enjoyed where they are, and then left to die, because they will never be the same again.

I can play all the on disk ps3 games I own, the downloadable ones are dust on the wind.

Why don't we just keep as much of high-resolution gameplay videos as possible. This makes reconstruction possible at least in theory. Not now, but with the time it should be possible to reconstruct similar experience even for multiplayer online games. Not the code, of course.

I think Switch is just following the other consoles eventually.

This lead me think, is there any 8-bit/16-bit/32-bit native handheld (not Pi emulation) market? I guess the primary difficulty is to make games for them, so most likely just a small hobbyist market. I still think kids don't really care about graphics though, at least when they are young.

It's not fun how the trend is to force everybody to have internet, as if it was an essential service like electricity or water. Some argue it is, but I'd say we're generally far from there. I wanted a console to play when I go to my out of town apartment where we don't need nor want to contract an internet line. And now it means I cannot even bring some cartridges with me and swap them as I please, because they are always requiring internet connectivity for everything.

What hasn't failed me is to hack my devices and use pirated versions of my content. Ironic that this method works much better. All games I want, locally, in a pack of SD cards I bring in my backpack, ready to install and play 100% offline at any moment in a train, a flight, a boat.

> "You would hope that a company that big, that has such a storied history, would take preservation a little more seriously.”

Why would one hope that? Nintendo has never ever shown any kind of sign of even remote interest in anybody not-Nintendo doing any kind of preservation.

The article already touches on this, but in the modern day the games that exist on physical media are pretty much useless without their zero-day patches. Putting physical media aside, companies rarely make older builds available, so even when media contains a game and servers are up there is already plenty of ‘lost media’ if you consider old and interesting (potentially hilariously broken) old builds of virtually every game.

I’ve realized this at some point, but video games are ephemeral and should really be enjoyed in the now. Even if you can perfectly preserve a game, and the means to play it, tastes change so quickly in gaming that a game that’s fun today might not be enjoyable even a year later.

It's a shame. The beautiful thing about Switch game cards is that you can just pop them in and play. Compare that to PS5 where you have a lengthy installation followed by a 40GB download...

> should the Switch 2 shop servers ever close down in the distant future – and therefore no longer provide the downloads necessary – those cartridges may become unplayable.

> may

Weasel 'game journalists' like this is the reason gaming is dying.

The world is WILL not may. It happened before and it will happen again because publications like this are nothing more than pr department for gaming companies.

Things like this happen at least partially because of people who'd blindly pay greedy companies like Nintendo, let 'em grow and have their way with their dark patterns.

If I give this GameKey card to the friend, will he be able to download and play it? With card inserted, of course. If not - these cards are just glorified activation codes

It CAN be used to give you a WHOLE new experience without any additional hassle! But it WILL be used to lock you out of your $85 instead.

I was under the impression that the games would download and be stored on the card. Is this not the case? My current collection of game cards exceeds any expanded storage by quite a wide margin…

Edit: I guess not:

“you must have enough free space in your Nintendo Switch 2 system memory or microSD Express card”

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

FFS. I never thought this day would come with Nintendo.

Does the GameKey Cards allows me to play the game offline??

Wow this website does pop up ads on mobile devices in 2025.

Hot take: when a game is not able to be preserved, it is not worthy of preservation efforts. When it's not worthy of being saved for the future is it even worth playing today? My answer is no.

This way nintendo can take the games you bought for any reason or no reason at all. You'll own nothing and like it!