this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
97 points (94.5% liked)

Games

38929 readers
806 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
97
Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card Overview (en-americas-support.nintendo.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
66 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Game-key cards are different from regular game cards, because they don’t contain the full game data. Instead, the game-key card is your "key" to downloading the full game to your system via the internet.

Pay a premium for a physical copy of your game, and the cartridge may not contain the actual game. Only on Nintendo Switch 2.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (4 children)

So they essentially stuffed a download code into a physical cartridge to make people feel like they are getting something?

Isn't that needless and wasteful? Isn't it also going to trick unsuspecting people into buying something they think is a physical version of a game but isn't?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Nintendo's site says the cartridge must always be inserted in order to play the game, and so it is the cartridge that controls the game license.

On that basis it seems likely you could sell/give the cartridge to someone else, after which they can play it and you no longer can - they'd just also have to download it first.

[–] velxundussa 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Until the download servers go down and you have a cartridge that's just ewaste

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes, which is a big part of why, despite allowing transfers, it still sucks.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the clarification!

I still don't like it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Me neither. It's basically a download game but with physical DRM in the form of a cartridge. The age of genuine physical game ownership is toast.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They've been doing that for decades now. Lots of PC games had a box and CD, but the only thing on it was a stub installer to run Steam. Or even if it had the full game, you'd have to download a giant day-one patch to fix all the bugs fixed between the image going gold and the actual release day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Nothing new here. PS3 games were famous for requiring an install from the optical media to the internal drive first, and then also downloading some mandatory major update before running. The role of the physical media was mostly symbolic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

They better have a proper label / sticker there.

For collectors, and resell value compared to a paper with a code.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

One thing I don't see people mentioning is that Nintendo Switch 1 game cartridges had 32gb of storage. We don't know about regular Switch 2 cartridge storages, but they've already announced games like Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy that are much bigger than that. Add in the fact that Switch 2 promises games in 4k (when docked) and there's a very decent chance that these game-key cartridges exist because some games wouldn't fit in cartridges and would otherwise have to be digital-only or not be on this console at all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I don't think there is anything stopping nintendo from making 64GB or larger cartridges except the cost.