[Gematsu] Switch 2 game preorders in Japan reveal that all physical 3rd party games are Digital Game Keys (Except Cyberpunk 2077)

Just confirms that likely third-parties were nagging Nintendo to offer a cheaper storage solution to still keep releasing at retailers.

Limited Run games + Nintendo first-party are probably the only true physical ownership not reliant on servers we're gonna get this gen.

Unless you like reselling games, might as well go digital vs these key cards. End of an era.
 
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the game card tax is to high this time for third parties, CDPR must have made a good deal with Nintendo to afford the full game on a single card
 
RaZoR No1 said:
Isnt that exactly the same as the original idea / concept for the Xbox One?
Everyone was mad at MS but now everybody is doing the same...
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no, it's actually the exact inverted version.

the Xbox One concept was that the game is on the disc, but you can only ever use the disc on the first console you installed the game to. the disc would now be tied to your system/account.

this is the exact opposite. the game is not on the cart, but you can sell it or give it to someone rlse if you want, and it's not tied to your system.

both are retarded, but retarded for different reasons.
 
Danny Dudekisser said:
We're just at that point where people have to admit physical is dead. Yeah, I know the sales figures are big for some games, but functionally? The utility of physical is gone. Arguably just a hindrance, outside of potential resale value.

Which kinda kills me because I really love physical :(
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Pour one out for our dying homies. It's going away in 5 years.
 
I'm a Video Game Collector and this is like a Punch in the Nuts :D

But these Game-Key Cards are still a better solution than Video Games with a CIAB (Code in a Box).

I really believe that it's not Nintendo's intention to Kill the physical Video Games Market because Nintendo is still selling Millions of physical Video Games compared to Sony and Microsoft.

I believe Nintendo had to find a good solution to be able to still offer 3rd Party Developers the possibility to release a physical Version of their Video Games despite rising Video Game Data and Cartridge Costs.

I could imagine that the Solution with Game-Key Cards actually in some way even saved physical Media from 3rd Party Developers on the Nintendo Switch 2.
 
Danny Dudekisser said:
We're just at that point where people have to admit physical is dead. Yeah, I know the sales figures are big for some games, but functionally? The utility of physical is gone. Arguably just a hindrance, outside of potential resale value.

Which kinda kills me because I really love physical :(
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We're all really that lazy?
 
Astray said:
What we need to admit is not that Physical is dead, it's that companies want it to be dead.

Nintendo wants to start locking up its consumers asap to build Switch 1/2 into a platform that people can't walk away from easily..

They know that their opponents like Steam, Sony, MS are all doing similar things, which means that taking customers off of these players is tough as nails and they want to make it tough for them too.
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Nintendo has to have sales. That's the main difference between the others and nindy . Seeing the price for botw at target is still shocking
 
wow...imagine we thought we had to worry about MS doing this fuck shit and Nintendo is out greeding everyone.


LordOcidax said:
Nintendo should force third party devs on buying more expensive cards right?
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shit, they had no issue forcing developers to do lots of shit on their platform, why would this be a hard ask?
 
bitbydeath said:
I'm starting to think we should let this console die so they can revert all the crap they're pulling.
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I'm starting to think people on here should think before they post.

You have 3rd party games with file sizes 64GB+ in size. Coupled with that, Cartridges are much more expensive to produce than Blu-ray disc and eat into profits for game drvs/pubs

Outside of Nintendo making the weird decision of (allegedly) only producing 2 sizes of carts i.e. one small, one big, it is inevitable that the larger file sized games are simply NOT GOING TO FIT on a cartridge of ANY size. Period. Game-keys at least offer a solution to still have something physical and tangible for people to buy, sell, trade while having games with much higher file sizes.

Does it suck when companies cheap out and put 6GB games on a Game-key? Yes.
Is having SOMETHING on a "physical" medium for 64GB+ games better than nothing at all? Yes.
 
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EDMIX said:
shit, they had no issue forcing developers to do lots of shit on their platform, why would this be a hard ask?
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kAiogGB.gif
 
bitbydeath said:
Agreed, that was not a great post as you just made a ton of excuses for them.

I'm just going to stick with my Switch for the foreseeable.
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What you call excuses I call explanations...but please, if you have a better idea of how to fit a 100GB game on a 64GB cartridge please do share it with the world...
 
Astray said:
You can technically burn the games on discs and sell them/give them away and no one would even know, let alone prosecute you for it.
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You can also download torrents with cracks and do the same thing (literally what they did in Latinamerica for eons), but you know that's not what I meant
 
If Nintendo is dead set on proprietary cartridges for their games, they should be subsidizing the cost for 3rd party publishers to put the games on the carts.

But by all means, this is probably cheaper all the way around. Are these fake cartridges required to be in the system to play the game?
 
Pejo said:
If Nintendo is dead set on proprietary cartridges for their games, they should be subsidizing the cost for 3rd party publishers to put the games on the carts.

But by all means, this is probably cheaper all the way around. Are these fake cartridges required to be in the system to play the game?
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Yes, it's why some people believe they can be resold and bought used. If you don't have the key in the system the game won't play.
 
I didn't have Nintendo being one of the final nails in the coffin of physical games on the bingo card even tho I probably should have.
 
EDMIX said:
shit, they had no issue forcing developers to do lots of shit on their platform, why would this be a hard ask?
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Especially since the cost would probably just end up being passed on to customers in the form of higher physical prices like they did back in SNES and N64 days.
 
This is the last step before companies go all-digital. I don't much like it, but it's still better than just digital, because you can still sell it, trade it, lend it, play it offline. Much like a lot of blu ray discs are these days.
 
Danny Dudekisser said:
We're just at that point where people have to admit physical is dead. Yeah, I know the sales figures are big for some games, but functionally? The utility of physical is gone. Arguably just a hindrance, outside of potential resale value.

Which kinda kills me because I really love physical :(
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Once stores like Gamestop and Best Buy stop accepting trading in games is when console discs will disappear. Gamers might as well go digital and stores selling games will just try to sell digital key cards. Then game makers wont bother with discs anymore as demand drops.

PC gravitated to digital because there's never been widespread trading in PC games. Not sure why game shops never wanted to accept PC games, but console and handheld games have always been ok. Maybe shops think PC trade ins are fake and it's a blank floppy or CD with a fake label. Not sure. Out of all the game shops I know since my first visit in the 80s, there's only a couple that were willing to do PC trade ins. And those places stopped in the late 90s.

I was someone who liked physical as well, but transitioned 10 years ago and never locked back. Same with music CDs. Everyone in the 2000s is getting MP3 players and iPods and I didnt give a shit. I just bought CDs for $10. Then I realized what a waste of time and money that is. I still got my shelf of like 200 CDs. Nice living room decor maybe, but functionally useless.
 
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Ugh, I'm still gonna try and get the Switch 2, but I wish all the red flags and bad news would fucking stop. It was bad enough when I knew Bravely Default was a game card key, but this is just getting worse all the time. I guess I'll only be getting Cyberpunk 2077 for third party at launch...hopefully the future has more options.
 
Pejo said:
If Nintendo is dead set on proprietary cartridges for their games, they should be subsidizing the cost for 3rd party publishers to put the games on the carts.

But by all means, this is probably cheaper all the way around. Are these fake cartridges required to be in the system to play the game?
Click to expand...

It's not really any different than how the Blu Ray consoles work.
 
asdasdasdbb said:
It's not really any different than how the Blu Ray consoles work.
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Sorta, but blu-ray is quite a bit cheaper than a cartridge to produce. Also there are no expectations of saving any data on a blu-ray, not that cartridges have been doing that much since system storage usually holds game saves.
 
Pejo said:
Sorta, but blu-ray is quite a bit cheaper than a cartridge to produce.
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True. I think that there was speculation that the 64 GB cart might be $15. Which is a lot.

It seems dumb that CDPR is doing this, but perhaps they have plans to have the eShop version often discounted to $45 like the other platforms eventually. And just never put the physical one on sale.
 
bitbydeath said:
They could make 100GB+ sized cartridges.
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They could...they could also charge $100+ to cover the manufacturing costs as well...but seeing as we have people losing their shit over $80 games I don't think $100+ games would go over so well.

The higher the data capacity, the higher the cost of the game would have to be (in general)
 
ReBurn said:
Especially since the cost would probably just end up being passed on to customers in the form of higher physical prices like they did back in SNES and N64 days.
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I'm saying

Why the fuck are we paying 80 to 90 for their games, yet that fucking cost isn't going into MAKING SURE THE GAME WE ARE PAYING MORE MONEY FOR btw is in the fucking cart?
 
Gambit2483 said:
They could...they could also charge $100+ to cover the manufacturing costs as well...but seeing as we have people losing their shit over $80 games I don't think $100+ games would go over so well.

The higher the data capacity, the higher the cost of the game would have to be (in general)
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They could also not be greedy and decrease the price back to $60.

256GB costs just two dollars more than a 64GB cart, and that's consumer pricing, not the special deals they get for buying in bulk.
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
Once stores like Gamestop and Best Buy stop accepting trading in games is when console discs will disappear. Gamers might as well go digital and stores selling games will just try to sell digital key cards. Then game makers wont bother with discs anymore as demand drops.

PC gravitated to digital because there's never been widespread trading in PC games. Not sure why game shops never wanted to accept PC games, but console and handheld games have always been ok. Maybe shops think PC trade ins are fake and it's a blank floppy or CD with a fake label. Not sure. Out of all the game shops I know since my first visit in the 80s, there's only a couple that were willing to do PC trade ins. And those places stopped in the late 90s.

I was someone who liked physical as well, but transitioned 10 years ago and never locked back. Same with music CDs. Everyone in the 2000s is getting MP3 players and iPods and I didnt give a shit. I just bought CDs for $10. Then I realized what a waste of time and money that is. I still got my shelf of like 200 CDs. Nice living room decor maybe, but functionally useless.
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That's not why they went digital. And you call yourself a pc gamer, lol.
 
asdasdasdbb said:
Figured that was going to happen.



Really when you think about it, The Token and being able to Re-sell it (once they are done playing) is what people that buy physical care about. And that still keeps retailers interested.

Well, except for The 'Collectors who think they can sell it 20 years from now for big bucks'
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My NES, SNES, and GCN collections could be sold for big bucks. Heck, even my PS2 collection has some valuable games.
 


Just feel like sharing this since so many people have kept trying to tell us that "it's been digital only for a long time", when she helps back up that those claims are BS.

There are so many games, and people who have bought them, that are not digital only. This turn of events is a still real shitty because it still comes at a point where a lot of people want physical.
 
Miles708 said:
Is there even something good about the Switch 2?
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aside from exclusives, for me no. basically people put up with all this crap just because of exclusives like donkey kong bananza

not being able to backup your save data (only cloud), sub par performance for 3rd party game, worse battery life compared to oled switch, expensive games, expensive online subscription.

7 years ago the switch is attractive because of the portability, but now that steam deck or ally x already existed, switch 2 is trash because of all the above reason
 
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demigod said:
That's not why they went digital. And you call yourself a pc gamer, lol.
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Im not a big PC gamer. Played back then, then went AWOL for almost 20 years only signing up for Steam and GOG indie games in 2020. My biggest PC gaming was around 1999-2001 playing HOMM 3.
 
paolo11 said:
What's the point of these game keys cartridge? Might as well go digital then
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You can sell them, or lend them to friends or family members. But if you're someone who doesn't do these types of things, yeah might as well go digital I guess.
 
I wonder if nintendo account is required to download those games or just a internet connection is enough.
 
Another solution could have been games being heavily compressed on smaller SD storages and then unpacking into bigger files during installation. The modern compression methods of Switch 2 should have enabled this. Besides, if Switch games do in fact upscale from baselines as low as 540p/720p, then texture asset size need only be as fraction as big as on 4K devices.
Like Heimdall_Xtreme Heimdall_Xtreme implies, it might be not a matter of size but simply cheaping out on using MicroSD altogether. Key Cards probably cost less than a dollar to use.
 
Digital on a closed platform like a console is hostile towards the customer af. Will stomach this BS because family / kids this gen and see how it goes, but i'm not expecting myself to buy any consoles anymore if this trend continues. PC all the way.
 
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