The Nintendo Switch 2 introduced the “Game Key Card” publishing option, where game makers could cut the manufacturing fee of a game by printing a “key” that contains nothing but permission to play the digital version. It was an untested and unproven idea, and so far, it doesn’t appear to be winning consumers over.
Reports are coming out that the leading lineup of third-party games on Switch 2 have sold “lower than the lowest estimates” and just aren’t moving. The lone exception is Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red. Points have been made that the Switch 2 costs so much that no one has money left over to get anything else, but…Cyberpunk would seem to dispel that theory. And what does that one have that the others don’t? A solid physical cart. Everyone else, from Square Enix to Sega, elected to use the Game Key Card.
Game Key Cards don’t personally appeal to me, but a lot of things don’t. I don’t like watching golf of stuffy Victorian-era dramas either, but clearly SOME people do. Everyone’s different — I figured the Key Cards could find some kind of consumer base that wasn’t me. I thought wrong. The website Nintendo Life conducted a survey and found over 70% of its readers had no interest in Game Key Cards at all. This is bad because…well, they bet a lot on this horse. We warned NIS last week they were making a mistake by publishing their Collectors Editions on Key Cards and it seems all the more obvious now.
If you’re worried about Limited Run Games, they’ve gone on record regarding this: “If Limited Run is manufacturing the standard edition Switch 2 game, it will always use an actual cartridge. We have no plans to support the Game-Key Card format on titles where we are the manufacturer and publisher.” What they’re dancing around is that sometimes LRG will serve as the distributor of someone else’s title, and in that case, they’d have the option of choosing a Game-Key Card, something LRG would have no control over. It wouldn’t be their fault in that case, but good luck convincing social media.
Time will tell if Key Cards will experience a rebound, but I feel it’s more likely they’ll clutter up the clearance bins by this fall. Shoulda sprung for the 64GB cart, fellas!
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