The fervor that some are raising over the Nintendo Switch 2 Game Key Card situation has left many questioning what’s really going on and what The Big N is trying to do with them. If you don’t know, these key cards are full-on cartridges that you can buy, but instead of the game being on them, you have to download the data from the online servers. Multiple third-party developers/publishers have embraced this, though not all. However, there have been many wondering if Nintendo will use these key cards for its first-party games down the line.
Enter Nintendo Life, which straight-up reached out to Nintendo, via the UK branch, and asked them about potential first-party key card games. The answer they got was:
We currently have no plans to use game-key cards for Nintendo-developed titles
That says a lot right there, don’t you think? As Doug Bowser noted in a previous talk about the key cards, they are a way for third-party developers to put more on the Nintendo Switch without being confined to the limits of the cartridge. In contrast, companies like Xbox have been doing this kind of thing for their own first-party games for a while now, including recent titles like Doom: The Dark Ages.
