> Game keycards keep the appearance of physical ownership without delivering what people expect from a cartridge.

How's that? Can't you buy & resell them on the used market? That seems like the only thing a physical cartridge gets you, and not shipping the outdated-on-day-one bits on the cart saves some money, too. Seems like win-win?

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bilkow an hour ago | parent | next [-]

- You can't download the game without internet, including re-downloading because you had to free up space

- You can't download the game after they have retired their servers (or if their servers are down / having issues)

- The game ends up taking a lot more storage space as updates are usually tiny when compared to the base game. For reference, the Switch 1 version of Zelda Tears Of the Kingdom takes 16 GB while the latest update takes only 500 MB.

	▲	coldpie an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think most of that is true for games shipped on cart, too. Games often ship broken or missing features which are patched in at launch. Official physical media has not been a reliable method for future accessibility for at least a decade now. It's way past time to start using other methods of preservation.

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drdexebtjl 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the point is that X years from now, when the servers are turned off, you don’t actually have the game.

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LetsGetTechnicl 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That's true, but Nintendo has been good about this. You can still download your digital purchases from the Wii, Wii U and 3DS stores just fine.

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coldpie an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I believe that is largely true even if they shipped a game on the cart. Many games ship broken, and they also change many times over the course of their life. I don't think official media can be considered any part of a future accessibility strategy for at least a decade now. Game keycards don't change that fact in any way.

	▲	drdexebtjl an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It can be a part. Games shipping broken and needing day-1 updates is a consequence of our indifference towards physical media dying. On the Switch and the Switch 2, I’ve never had a physical game that didn’t let me skip updates and play offline. Probably due to a mix of Nintendo actually reviewing retail releases before they are “pressed”, and due to the fact that these are portable devices with no cellular.

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vel0city an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I do agree, in the world of day one patches its not a given having the full, actually playable game on the cart itself isn't a given. We're already largely at the point where game discs and carts are really just license keys, this is just saving some money on the storage.

But it sure was nice when you had the whole game sitting there, without having to rely on some download server still being around. I'm able to go grab a used GameBoy game off the shelf at the used game store, stick it in an old GameBoy, and outside of some games with batteries in them (repairable fwiw) it just works. This has been great for my little kids, as I trust them a lot more with a cheap GBA SP than I do the Switch when going out places. Way more pocketable, way less fragile, and the replacement cost (and repairability) is a lot better.

If I grabbed an old Switch off the shelf in 30 years, popped in a game key card, would I actually be able to play anything? Probably not. There's a good chance most of this Switch 2 will be useless in 30 years time.