Nintendo

Haven't we kinda dealt with this issue already on discs?

I can't think of a physical disc I have bought for my PS5 that does nothing more than download the game to the system once I put it in - with whatever current updated version it is. And I still have to put the disc in to verify I have the physical media - even though it never checks the disc after that point.

And you might say, "Well some of the discs have the whole game on them!" OK, sure. But they immediately download the latest updates once you install the game. And unless I have never seen it, I don't think there's a "roll back to X version" option anywhere.

No game on card ? No buy.

I’m willing to pay for games, in two circumstances :

1. A physical copy with a full working game on it (even if, understandably, it’s not the latest version)
2. A digital copy with no DRM

Nintendo obviously will never provide the second option, and if they also refuse to provide the 1st, I guess I’ll have to take my business elsewhere.

The opposite can also be said. People have always been complaining you can't trade digital games.

Now you can. It's a digital game that's not attached to your account, but to the physical card, it can easily be sold again.

While certainly not as good as a true physical game, it's way better than the alternative: a full digital catalogue tied to your account.

Also your games a literally gone, even your "physical" ones if they decide you did something they don't like and banned your device from Nintendo networks.

Nearly 90% of physical games can be completed without a download of any kind. I can't say how Switch 2 cards will end up, but I would hope it's not as dire as everyone seems to think it'll be. If it is, I guess I won't buy Switch 2 games.

https://www.doesitplay.org/

This was already true of a number of Switch 1 games, where the partial data in the cart did not include access to the full game. Some gave you access to only a demo (in the line of the "play before the download is finished" feature in home consoles), others not even that. And of course it was true of the "code-in-a-box" products they were selling on retail that you couldn't even resell or return.

The real issue isn't how the key carts work, which is an improvement on those.

The issue is that the cost of carts with actual storage has gone up. Nintendo's change of memory spec means they've given up on the low-storage carts, which used to come in a bunch of sizes, some of which were relatively cheap. They've gone for a single 64GB SKU, which means the type of game that can afford the physical storage will be significantly restricted.

This may well make technical sense (the new storage standard is based on a SD card update that may not even exist at lower sizes by default), but the practical effect may be that the cost of physical carts makes no sense to anybody but the largest games/publishers, which is a travesty. Nintendo should have found a way around this, even if it is to subsidize the cart cost with their cut of the game's price to some extent. I get why that's not the case, since it'd effectively mean giving their cut of each game straight to Amazon and other retailers, but man, does it suck as it is.

I think what we'll end up seeing is a lot more Limited Run-style expensive collector's editions being the only physical media releases of many games. And even that only if people do get used to paying extra to subsidize the card out of their own pocket. If I was Nintendo I would have considered making it a standard to have every physical game in both formats as a rule and have people pay an extra tenner for the full storage version. Instead, they chose to try to push the top end of the price range anyway with no guarantee that the cost of media is part of the increase. They've been indecisive and the outcome is going to suck.

Of course people would be complaining just as hard if they had done that, which is one of the examples where gamers' default position being antagonism can yield worse results.

It's not just Switch games.

https://lemmy.world/post/29538917

I don't sell my games, so I see zero point in game key carts anyway. All I want is those to be identified so I know that if I want these particular games I don't buy the useless cart version.

Incidentally I absolutely never had to return to the base unpatched version of a game on Switch, and I have quite a few of them.

Everything has pros and cons. Currently there are physical collector editions, that don't actually have a game on disc, just a download code. Similarly, some collections are sold with one game on disk, rest a downloadable code. These codes are one-use only and can't be sold again.

Game key carts solve that problem. Instead of just putting a one-time code, they can use game-key cart, which people can use multiple times.

As for games installing on internal memory instead of the cart, yes, it works like all other downloads. The game that have partial data on disc, or any update that's downloaded. Or every single PS / Xbox game because they can't run directly from optical drive, so you have to copy the full data, download the updates, and still can't play without the disc.

You shouldn't think of a "digital" game. Those who want digital will just download digital. You should think of it as a physical game that has very little data on cart and rest is all a download (like Doom: Dark Ages shared below, just 85MB on disk, rest is a download)

The biggest con IMO is that some companies who were willing to release a cart with full or partial data may decide to go for the game-key cart since it's a official thing now, and average people buying it may not see any difference. So, I hope the collectors vote with wallet and ask the publishers to release full game on disk instead of using game-key carts.

Oh no, I'll just wait 6 months and play the games for free. Like I've done since N64.

Doesn't matter. This sub will still be hype as fuck for bing bang wahoo Mario and the next Legend of Lonk in a few years and it won't come up again.