It is less bad than code-in-a-box. That’s not a high bar, but it is less bad.
There are two main reasons to buy physical:
Ability to share, trade, and resell your games. These key cards still support this, whereas code-in-a-box did not. So, slightly better.
Then there’s the peace of mind that your games will still work in the distant future. I think if you ask most people who primarily buy physical, myself included, we’ll say this is the main appeal of physical games, and the big reason why key cards don’t feel acceptable.
Some day when the servers eventually go offline, these key cards will become bricks. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. We have no idea how long Nintendo will support them for, and they’re not going to hard commit a timetable out loud for us. But we know it can’t be forever.
But even for standard physical games, there is some uncertainty regarding their long-term future that I’m not sure people realize. When those servers eventually go online, your cartridge only has 1.0 on it, you won’t be able to get patches. That’s better than a brick, but for a lot of games that’s probably not the version you want to play.
And then the even darker concern is bit rot. No form of physical media is permanent. Every disc and every cartridge will eventually degrade. Worse yet is that for many forms of media, we don’t even know how long they’re set to last for, we only find out once some of them start to fail. Cartridges are generally better than discs, but beyond that we truly have no idea how long Switch cartridges should be expected to last.
I’m generally in favor, provided the licenses transfer properly when you sell it, while the game remains until someone else inserts the card.
Mh, not sure how I feel about these. On one hand, as someone who mostly buys games secondhand, I appreciate they can be resold unlike actual digital releases. But what’s going to happen in 15-20 years when Nintendo pulls the plug on the Switch servers and eShop? Won’t these stop working? So at that point it’s just a piece of plastic whereas physical cartridges would still let you play games. Feel free to correct me if I’m misunderstanding how they work!
That’s about right. That said, we also don’t know how long regular Switch/Switch 2 carts are going to last. The MaskROM used in the N64/DS and earlier eras is significantly more reliable when stored for a long time than the modern NAND Flash memory as used in the 3DS/Switch+. I suspect key carts won’t have any NAND Flash inside (they don’t need gigabytes of capacity just to store a game name + icon) and might physically last longer.
Of course, key carts are all going to drop to zero value practically overnight when Nintendo eventually pulls the plug, while real carts will die one by one.
What’s stopping the key on that cart locking to the account of the first user when you download the game?
Have they said that won’t happen?
Yes
