Game key cards were one of the more deflating aspects of the Switch 2’s launch year. While digital downloads are now ubiquitous, some of Nintendo’s most devoted (and loudest) fans still prefer physical games for the purposes of collecting or preservation, or just because they look nice. A cartridge that doesn’t actually have the game on it just isn’t the same. Yet despite all the uproar over the issue, a new survey suggests people are buying game key cards anyway.
Deku Deals, an aggregator of sales and discounts for physical games, shared some new data about its users that shows game key cards are selling just fine. “Of the 1,070 Deku Deals users who have added one or more third party physical releases to their collection, 735 of them own one or more Game-Key Card titles,” the site wrote in a new blog post this week. There’s even a pie chart to show the disparity.
The site also listed the most popular Switch 2 games among its users. Six of them are game key cards (the bolded ones):
- Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
- Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster
- Hades II
- Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
- Star Wars Outlaws Gold Edition
- Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut
- Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
- Street Fighter 6 Years 1-2 Fighters Edition
- Persona 3 Reload
- Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar
Of course, it’s worth noting that the majority of Switch 2 physical games are actually game key cards. So if you’re someone who just buys a bunch of games in general, or are one of those hyper-fans who wants to own all of the Switch 2’s launch library, you’re going to end up with a bunch of game key cards by default. At the same time, the survey at least suggests that people who would buy physical in the first place are still opting for game key cards over just buying the game digitally from the eShop. That’s probably the sentiment that led Nintendo to launch game key cards in the first place.
At launch, companies reportedly only had access to the 64GB card sizes for physical Switch 2 games. The extra expense is what steered so many to opting for game key cards instead. Hades 2, for example, is $50 for the Switch 2 cartridge but only $30 if you buy it in the eShop. Other companies have just eaten the loss on margins. That’s seemingly what CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition.
Fortunately, it sounds like that is no longer a restriction for companies moving forward. R-Type Dimensions 3 publisher Inin Games accidentally leaked that more cartridge sizes had become available back in December before deleting its post on the subject. Game key cards will still be necessary for some games. The file size for Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on Switch 2 is too big to fit on a cart, and developers for open-world games like Star Wars Outlaws have argued that loading data off of a physical cartridge is too slow to yield decent performance. We’ll see if players stop opting for game key cards if and when they become less prevalent.