Nintendo currently offers its physical Switch 2 cards to game publishers in two sizes: Too Small and Too Large. Most modern games won’t fit in the Too Small size, and Too Large adds extra cost to the manufacturing process. We don’t know why Nintendo did this, but we don’t really know why Nintendo does anything.
However, there’s a third option, something of Big N’s own invention: the Key Card. Halfway between a digital and a physical game, the Key Card offers the benefits of both: you can store the game on your system, but you have the freedom to sell or borrow it. While Key Cards are fine for the mainstream market, they pose a problem for video game collectors.
Collectors collect things because they expect those things to last. The fact that the server a Game Card is meant to download from probably won’t disappear for twenty years isn’t enough. They want FIFTY years. They want forever. And while the possibility of bitrot makes that a bit unrealistic, we can say anyone who aims at the collector market, yet puts their game on a Key Card, does not really understand that market.
So….that’s the situation we’ve found ourselves in with NIS. This is a Japanese company that has their own niche of the game market, with a hardcore base of fans that seek out the specific series they produce. People who buy NIS games physically are very likely to be collectors. This week they revealed two upcoming Switch 2 releases, Disgaea 7 Complete and The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Beyond The Horizon in deluxe Limited Edition packages…with key cards inside.
This is going to inevitably backfire. No one who collects NIS games wants a piece of plastic serving as a ticket for the game, they want THE GAME etched into silicon. And in this instance it makes no sense to balk over the manufacturing cost of a 64 GB game card. The new Trails set is $109.99. These collectors are used to paying a lot. Ten or twenty dollars higher would not make them bat an eyelash.
There’s an alternative for Disgaea fans: Disgaea 7 was already released on the original Switch, physically. If you don’t care about all the DLC costumes and stuff, there’s a solid alternative out there. But when these new Collectors Editions don’t sell, we hope NIS recognizes that as a sign collectors don’t want Key Cards, rather than a sign they don’t want physical at all.
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