I Can't STOP Buying Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Cards

Quickly, this is the last day to pre-order the beat 'em ups Back to the Future movie posters. It's only $17 for both of these. They directly support the channel. Great Scott, THE VIDEO'S STARTING. Think it's finally time that we have this conversation. Because every time I buy or show a game key card, I get the same comments. Like, "Oh, Wood, you're part of the problem. Wood, you said you weren't going to buy game key cards." Which I never said I wasn't going to buy game key cards, by the way. I just said I don't like them. If I had my way, video games would be preserved physically for the rest of my lifetime. You know, Sony wouldn't be canceling physical games and moving all digital. Nintendo wouldn't be doing whatever the heck this thing is. I have a lot of reasons why I have chose to buy them, which I want to talk about today. But on top of that, over the last year and a half, I've done a lot of research and looking into why game key cards even exist in the first place. And unfortunately, I'm going to get it. I mean, I I still don't like it, but I get why they need to exist. Or at least why Nintendo thought they did. So, in this video, I want to talk about why I buy these things. Also, why I think they even exist in the first place, as well as the future of physical releases for [music] Nintendo, and why I think game key cards, in a very unfortunate way, are actually acting as video game preservation more than you think. >> The reason why I'm in this car is because this car, this Porsche Taycan car, is actually in Asphalt Legends, the video game that's on Switch, too. So, I thought renting it for this sponsor spot would be cool. And it is, actually. It's really cool. Except, you have to unlock the car in the game. And I didn't know it was easier to get it in real life. I've actually been playing the Asphalt series on Switch for a while, ever since I reviewed it back in my free Switch games video years ago. I was immediately taken by just the arcade racing fun of the series. It felt like playing Burnout back in the day, just spinning the car around and knocking other racers out of the track. The slow-mo when that happens is so satisfying. Did you see that? For a free game, this one always surprises me. [music] Just the visuals and the frame rates are great, constantly adding in new content, and then the soundtrack is also insane. The races are so fun. They make it really addicting to just keep wanting to do one more and one more. And that's just in the campaign before you even jump online. And then on July 21st, they're adding a brand new drift mode as well as a Mount Fuji track. Hold on. Let me get this ramp. You know, I find moments like this in the air to be peaceful and serene. I almost died. On July 21st, Asphalt Legends is kicking off its JDM Turbo Fest event, bringing these three absolute legends, the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R, the Mazda RX-7 FD, and the Toyota Supra MK4. And if I pronounced any of those wrong, it's not my fault. I grew up in a weird country. It is so hot. The only question I have for you guys is what car are you picking? Cuz I'm picking Skyline or Supra. It's going to be Skyline. I'm going to pick the Skyline. So, if you want to jump in and play during this event on July 21st, you can click my link in the description box below. [music] You can start playing for free. And you can even use my code to get a free in-game reward. You might even see me racing online. I'm terrible. So, if you do see me, good news, you're probably going to win. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a video to finish. Okay, let's get the what I think should be the fairly obvious one out of the way first, and I know a lot of you already know this, but let me say it for the people way in the back. I buy video games for a living. Well, technically I play and review video games for a living, but to do that, I I need to buy them. So, what I'm saying is I am going to buy these games either way. And my two options have been to buy digitally or buy a game key card. And when I buy a game key card, I at least get something. It's been the same price this whole time. And as a collector, I get >> [music] >> a box. I get some art, albeit a little ruined by the big ugly white label I mentioned earlier. Nintendo, please find a way to It's so ugly. And I do get a cartridge. You know, it's [music] not what you want it to be, but it is a cartridge that I can lend. I can borrow to a friend if they want to play it. I can sell it if I really want to. I can trade it in. It kind of acts like a physical release. So, it gives me a lot more flexibility in the format of which I am purchasing. But, end of the day, what I buy them for is so that I actually feel like I'm getting something. Would I rather the game be stored on the actual cartridge? Absolutely, I would. But, I don't have control over that. If I decide not to buy whatever format of physical we have and I go digital, that just tells the publisher and developer that I'm okay with buying it digital, which is how we got here in the first place. Community backlash absolutely helps. Raising a stink and making it known that we do not want this could possibly, maybe lead to change. But, boycotting game key cards and buying digital instead, I do not think is sending the right message. But, that's just my personal preference. But, as far as why the game key cards even exist in the first place, that's what I was asking myself to begin with. It's like, why did Nintendo create this weird [music] in-between format? And they didn't just commit to one or the other. For those that don't know, I should probably say what a game key card actually is. A game key card is essentially a cartridge that doesn't play the game. It's not able to run the game. It doesn't have any storage space. It doesn't [music] really have any write speeds. It's a dummy cartridge. It has about 1 megabyte of information stored on it, and that information is just a code, a key to proxy a download. Once you put the cartridge in your system, it goes, "Oh, it's this game. I'll download it from the internet." That is only the case for any of these games that have this giant white label. Nintendo's own games, for example, your Donkey Kongs, your Mario Karts, those are on Nintendo's own 64 GB cartridges. Now that we have that clear, all developers and publishers have access to that ability if they so would choose, but most of them are picking game key cards. And I believe there are three main reasons why Nintendo opted to do these. The first is [music] game sizes. Games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is like over 100 GB. There is no way that's ever fitting on a single disc, let alone a cartridge. The cartridge sizes for Nintendo Switch 2 games go up to 64 GB. So, conservatively, you would need two of these cartridges to fit Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, just the size of it. And at the point where you say, "Well, let's put half on the cartridge, and you can download the other half," what's the point at that point? You still don't have the whole game if it requires the internet. Nintendo might have realized that some developers don't really care if their game fits on a cartridge because either it's not possible to, or it's going to change later anyway, so why not give them the option of a game key card? And that actually leads us into our second reason why I think these were invented, and that's cost. The cost of a 64 GB Nintendo Switch 2 game cartridge for the developers and publishers to buy from Nintendo. Well, we don't actually know, but it's been theorized to be somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 dollars, which isn't too different to hearing back on Switch 1 that the cartridges were really expensive for developers to buy. But Switch 2, it was that expensive and you only had one option, which was the 64 gigabyte. Now, that might make sense to a game like Cyberpunk who's going to release the game at 70 dollars and put the entire thing on the cartridge and utilize [music] most of the space, but when it comes to a game like Hades, an indie rogue-like that's probably about 5 gigs at best, they're going to fork out for a giant 64 gigabyte cartridge? They did. They did actually, and they had to charge twice as much for the game as it is on digital storefronts. And [music] that's a great example why it just doesn't make sense. And other indies and most people, that just doesn't make sense. Physical wasn't an option unless they had something like, oh, I don't know, a cheap game key card that was just a license to proxy a game download. So, you might be wondering, well, why do they cost so much? Is it Nintendo being greedy, charging so much for their cartridges and pricing everybody out of the market? Well, no, because that leads us into our third thing, which is write speeds. You probably know this already, but the larger you buy, the more it costs. Well, there's something else that drives up [music] the cost of these cards, and it's write speeds. How fast the cartridge can read the data and the information [music] on it. Two examples, one, the camera I'm filming on right now is a Sony, and it actually requires a specific Sony SD card that's really fast if I want to shoot in 120 frames because slower cards can't do it. So, that card costs a lot of money. This video is being recorded on a very expensive card. A Nintendo 64 GB cartridge needs [music] to be really fast and needs to run the game off of it. So, it needs to be able to keep up with the Nintendo Switch 2's really fast internal speeds because there's many ways to run a Switch 2 game on your console. Like if you buy Mario Kart World physically, you can run it off the cartridge or you can buy Mario Kart World digitally and you can run it off your system or you can buy Mario Kart World digitally and install it onto the SD card in your system and run it off of that. And each of those options will have different write speeds and you can actually see people have done tests of this to see what's the fastest and it's always Nintendo Switch [music] 2's own internal with the Switch 2 cartridges always being sizably slower. Because even though these are really fast cards trying to keep up with the Switch 2 console speeds to give you a similar experience, they just can't. And modern gaming is getting kind of ridiculous with what it needs, which is why we're going to this digital future. Unfortunately, I go back to the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Not only is it such a large file size, but the developer and creator of the game actually said they tried to run it off a cartridge. That the cartridge just wasn't able to keep up. So, they opted for a game key card release which forces everybody to run the game off the Switch 2 hardware itself. And in that way, they could make a really impressive version of the game. So, at least that way you could get something physical, >> [music] >> which is where in a weird way game key cards are preserving physical releases, kind of. So, it's not always about making the experience worse. Sometimes GameCube cards are about just making an experience possible. But, I will say that every situation does need to be [music] reviewed individually. I can see this game here, for example, Goodnight Universe. This is an indie game, kind of like a Telltale Walking Dead type situation. This could have ran off a cartridge, but it's a cheaper indie game that couldn't afford to do a 64 gig cartridge. And I'm sure some are just greedy, but you know, I don't think you can slap that on everyone. Here's what I'll say in Nintendo's credit. The Switch 2 released after the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. And both of those Those, why did I sound so British? Both of those only had digital-only versions of the consoles. You had to buy an extra add-on disk drive for the PlayStation 5. And yet, the Switch 2 came out and it was all physical. And I'll also say that to their detriment, they were also shockingly honest about a GameCube card, what it is, what it does, and advertising it to the box art's detriment, which I'll never get over. PlayStation, and for example, have been doing a similar thing for a while. I mean, it's a bit different, but you have games like Hogwarts Legacy and Call of Duty releasing with 1 MB of data on the disk proxying a download. And I feel like they don't have to be nearly as clear with their marketing or advertising as to what it is you're getting yourself into. To the point where I don't think people even realize that they can't play Hogwarts Legacy on their PlayStation 5 without downloading the entire game first. [music] There is a tiny little badge on the cover that does say download required, [music] which no one's seeing that. Also, though, must be nice. I wish ours were that small. I think the reason why PlayStation doesn't have to clarify that though is because it's a full disc. It's just the publisher and developer is choosing to only put that much on and proxy the download [music] for very similar reasons we've talked about today. Just feel in a world where like Sony is removing all physical releases in 2028 [music] and who knows what Xbox is going to do. You at least have Nintendo putting something on the shelves. Like there's going to come a time where we walk into retail stores and there's going to be no games. And I got to be honest, it feels like I already don't see an Xbox section. Not because they don't have physical, but because nobody wants it. Unfortunately, I hope they can turn the ship around. But there will come a day where [music] there's nothing even from Nintendo. And a lot of people might think that's crazy because I mean I did for a long time. Nintendo is such a tangible company. I think they know that we're all so nostalgic and we love buying like physical toys and trinkets and amiibos and this whole ecosystem around collecting Nintendo. But it's not their choice to some extent. We're already seeing the effects of the gaming industry these days and Nintendo needing to do something like a game key card just to keep up. But next generation, Switch 3 or whatever's coming after, game sizes are going to increase even more. The write speeds and and what is needed from the media physical media is going to increase even more. What are they going to do then? At what point do we let go of physical media whether we like it or not? And at what point do we walk into a store and never see a video game? Which I also think is like crazy cuz I feel like a lot of walking into a store and seeing games is almost free advertising for these companies. They stress so much about the cost, the cost of making a physical item when they could just buy it digital and it would save the company 10 cents per packaging and disc. But then you put all that stuff out onto a shelf in the middle of a store when moms and and dads are going shopping for that for that toilet paper and they walk by the video game aisle and they're like, "Oh, we should probably get that new game for little Timmy for his birthday." Or, "Oh, there's a new Nintendo? I didn't know there was a new Nintendo. We should buy a new Nintendo." I guess they're just going to put up banners for the consoles. They're like, "Go online. Buy our games. Order today." Can't get them here though. Ugh, what a bleak future. That said though, there has been some good strides recently. My favorite has been that Nintendo are actually listening, I feel, and they quietly introduced a new 16 GB cartridge just a few months ago for publishers and developers to use and put games out on it. Like, the first game that did that was Meow Memories in Orbit. It released at $30, which is pretty close to the price of the actual game as a physical release. That's possible now. And you might have also noticed around that time Limited Run Games, as well as Super Rare Games, both started doing Switch to physical releases, which is awesome. Even if it's for one last generation, we can still amass a physical collection of actual games that we can preserve and hold on to for the rest of our lives. Games like Lollipop Chainsaw, which is one of my favorite hack and slash games, just got a physical from Limited Run. Games like Mini Shoot, an indie gem darling I fell in love with in my eShop videos recently, Super Rare Games just released that physically. Actually, Super Rare Games, friends of the channel, I've been so excited to see them start back up again because I know I've been talking with the guy that owns the company and this was really up in the air. Like, he didn't know if he was going to be able to keep creating physical releases for Nintendo to preserve games and give these indie games that would never get a physical release an actual physical release until this solution came about, which is so satisfyingly hopeful at least for this one last generation. So, here's where I stand. I would always prefer a game to be fully on the cartridge, physically, and to be preserved in my collection. Every single time I would want that. And I really hope that publishers and developers keep pushing and striving to put their games on a full cartridge rather than a game key card release. And I hope Nintendo keeps releasing other formats and sizes of physical media for developers and publishers to use and utilize to help keep physical media alive. But, I also don't think that game key cards are the worst thing. I think that it presents options to a lot of publishers and developers to create a physical release even when things like the size of their game or the speeds of their game or the cost associated with all of it or sometimes all three inhibit their ability to actually release a full physical. So, that's why I buy game key cards, not because I want to and not because I think Nintendo gets a pass for them or anybody gets a pass for them, but because I buy games and they are my only option. I would rather own something over nothing. And you don't have to agree with me. You can boycott the game key cards. I actually respect that. I I'm I'm a little special. I'm a [laughter] little different in many ways, but also I'm going to buy them anyway so that I can keep making videos [music] for you guys and giving you free entertainment and things to watch on a Saturday evening. And at the end of the day, at least my Hades came with a little booklet in it. Plus, it's not even a game key card. You have your choice, and I have mine. And right now, my choice is to get up off the floor because I can smell cookies. That might not make sense to you, but it's because Kim's been baking cookies. In fact, she actually Oh, god, I'M SO UP NO! SHE GAVE ME THE BOWL CUZ I like to eat the cookie dough out of the bowl, and you might have heard that I just dropped it on the floor. The good news is I think the actual cookies are ready. So, I'm going to go eat a cookie and drown my sorrows.