Following the reveal of Nintendo’s new game-key cards throughout its Nintendo Switch 2 event final week, we’re lastly getting extra particulars about why they exist and the way they can be utilized. Though they don’t comprise a bodily copy of a sport, Nintendo’s Tetsuya Sasaki explained to GameSpot that game-key playing cards aren’t completely tied to a particular Nintendo account. The video games will be inserted and performed on any Swap 2 console, permitting them to be borrowed, rented, and even resold.
“So key playing cards will begin up on the console or system that it’s slotted into, so it’s not tied to an account or something,” mentioned Sasaki.
That conduct is completely different from the Swap video games that Nintendo presently sells in retail areas, which characteristic a obtain code as an alternative of a bodily cartridge. These codes can solely be used a single time and are linked to a particular Nintendo account, stopping them from being resold at a later date.
Recreation-key playing cards mechanically set off a sport obtain when inserted right into a Swap 2 console. As soon as the sport is downloaded and put in, an web connection “…is simply required while you launch the sport for the primary time,” according to a support page on Nintendo’s website. After that preliminary launch verify the sport will be performed with out an web connection, so long as the game-key cartridge remains to be inserted into the console.
The sport-key playing cards are an uncommon format that merges digital sport downloads and bodily cartridges with out fairly fixing the downsides of both format. Web entry remains to be required to obtain the video games, and you continue to want the cartridges to play them. However as Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser explained to The Verge, the game-key playing cards primarily profit publishers, permitting them to promote bodily copies of video games at retail areas that will exceed the 64GB capacity of regular Switch 2 game cartridges.