Elden Ring on Switch 2 Comes With a Big Asterisk Attached

Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition is available to pre-order now via Amazon. However, there are two big elements that might stop fans from dropping the cash right away. One element is that Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition appears to be a Game-Key Card, and the other is the game’s hefty $80 price tag.

Originally released in February 2022 for the PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, Elden Ring received universal acclaim at launch, and has only continued to be celebrated by fans and critics alike in the four years since. While Elden Ring is still sitting at a remarkable Top Critic Average of 95 on OpenCritic, its 2024 expansion, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, has a Top Critic Average of 94. By most accounts, Elden Ring is one of the best games of the decade, and to many, it’s one of the greatest video games of all time. And sometime this year, Nintendo Switch 2 owners will be able to play it for themselves.

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Elden Ring on Nintendo Switch 2 Could Be an $80 Game-Key Card

NintendoSwitch2_ELDEN RING Tarnished Edition_Screenshot-1 — elden ring tarnished edition switch 2 screenshot

As first spotted by Reddit user mason2393 and posted to the r/NintendoSwitch2 subreddit, pre-orders for Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition are now live on Amazon. As pointed out by the original Reddit post, two things immediately stand out about this Elden Ring Switch 2 Amazon listing. The first is that Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition costs $79.99.

At first glance, this price tag seems incredibly high, especially when compared to other third-party Nintendo Switch 2 ports like Hogwarts Legacy, Star Wars Outlaws, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which all retail for $59.99 each. But what’s not made immediately obvious by Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition‘s box art or Amazon’s current product description is that this Switch 2 port also comes with the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion built-in. On the PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, and Steam, a bundle that includes both Elden Ring and the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is $79.99. But while that means the pricing of this Switch 2 version of Elden Ring is technically in line with its other console and PC counterparts, it’s still higher than something like Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which includes both the base game and the Phantom Liberty expansion and retails for $69.99 on Switch 2.

Another notable asterisk attached to Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition is that it’s a Game-Key Card. For those unaware, a Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card doesn’t contain the full game on the cartridge, but instead acts more as a physical key that unlocks a full-game download when inserted into the console. While it’s understandable that a game as large as Elden Ring and an expansion as beefy as Shadow of the Erdtree might not fit on one regular Switch 2 Game Card, it’s undoubtedly going to be a turn-off for some fans.

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Something else to note is that Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition still doesn’t have a concrete Switch 2 release date. While Amazon has opened pre-orders for the long-awaited port, its listed release date is currently December 31, 2026, which is just a temporary placeholder.