Nintendo Is Quietly Revolutionizing Digital Gaming

The Nintendo Switch 2 has been making headlines on a daily basis for a whole week now, with much debate, praise and disappointment around a variety of topics. The huge amount of news that has been non-stop flooding gaming media has been difficult to keep up with, and I think it’s keeping one major story from getting the recognition it deserves.

For the last few weeks, we’ve seen small pieces of news along with a few bigger reveals all revolving around how Nintendo is handling digital gaming in the Switch 2 era. As physical sales decrease whilst gamers around the world opt to go digital, many have long been concerned about what rights and protections will be put in place to protect those investing in a digital library. Whilst Nintendo may not be offering any real concrete answers, the moves they’re making behind the scenes are serving to discreetly revolutionize the way that gamers engage with digital gaming – and it’s a change for the better.

First, Nintendo revealed before we even saw more from the Switch 2 that they’re changing how digital games are presented. Instead of just appearing as a square image that we click to start the game, Nintendo is rebranding digital games as ‘virtual game cards’. This rebranding also comes with a change in their functionality. These virtual game cards will be able to be borrowed to friends when sharing a local connection, just like a physical game. The player can share as many as they want across different friends or family, and will only need to connect to the internet once to verify the exchange. From then, your friends can play the digital games you borrow them, as if they inserted your game card into their system.

This rebranding we found to be incredibly effective and surprisingly pro-consumer. By rebranding the nebulous ‘digital game’ as instead being a virtualized version of a physical good, the game card, Nintendo are changing the optics of our digital games. They feel more like our own, because they look like and have the same name as our physical game cards. They even function the same being able to be passed to friends, as well as their visual representation being made more similar to a digital game card. This was already an overlooked story in the hype around the Switch 2, but what Nintendo revealed next only doubles down on our initial thoughts about virtual game cards.

The Switch 2 will have a new type of game you can buy in-stores, in the form of new Game-Key Cards. These caused quite a stir online when details were limited, but as we’re learning more about them, the better they sound. We’ll explain it briefly. Game-key cards are basically a licence to a digital game held on a physical Switch game cartridge. When you insert it into your console, it unlocks the digital game to download and play. When it’s removed, you can’t play it. It isn’t bound to your system or account, so they can be borrowed and resold at will. This is major, but not many people are talking about it.

Nintendo are merging the physical and digital gaming spaces in ways we’ve never seen before with Game-Key Cards. They’re an offering made to publishers if their game is too big (or unoptimized) to put onto a standard Switch cartridge, but they represent something greater than that too. Instead of just giving players a download code to a digital copy of a game in a box as they did with the original Switch, players will own a physical embodiment of a digital item. It’s a weird concept, but a huge step in the right direction.

Formerly, players buying a code in a box owned nothing but a piece of paper – once the code on it had been used, it was useless. The digital game was bound to your account and it can be delisted whenever. Whilst the digital versions of a Game-Key Card could still be delisted at some point, the backlash will be far louder given we now own the licence to it physically. It’s easier to defend our ownership of a digital item when we also own its physical manifestation, and Nintendo must be aware of this. They could’ve just continued their paper codes in a box approach of cheap digital game distribution, but they intentionally offer players a physical licence to a digital product as a means of solidifying our ownership of a digital good.

Nintendo may not be reinventing the wheel but their change in approach towards digital gaming, by physicalising the digital products we receive both in their branding and in purchasing options available to us, is really a considerable achievement. I like using digital games because it’s easier and I play lots of games, so it just feels good to know that my digital library will be rebranded into being a library of virtual game cards, rather than just empty JPEG files which open an .exe of the game.

There are some other, smaller things that also were shown over the last week that seem to be a step in the right direction for digital gaming. Whilst prices may fluctuate and are not set in stone just yet, Nintendo’s Switch 2 sites showed that digital games will be cheaper than physical games in the Switch 2 era. For example here in the United Kingdom, Mario Kart World was priced at £75 physically, but £67 digitally. It only seems fair to pay less for a digital version, given how much less manufacturing and distribution it requires – so that’s a good thing! Also, Nintendo has not stopped their incredible optimization of their game sizes with Switch 2, as the first revealed game file sizes are surprisingly small despite how expansive the games look.

For me, as a digital gamer who also likes to own things physically, I’m very happy with Nintendo’s transition into the Switch 2 era. They may not be the biggest announcements in the world, but almost everything we’ve heard over the last two weeks involving digital games from Nintendo has been positive. We’re going to have more options, more ways to share, and the boundary between physical and digital is being expanded, bringing more choice with it. They aren’t rewriting the rulebook, but Nintendo is quietly revolutionizing digital gaming on their consoles, and I hope other companies feel inspired to do the same.

What do you think of Nintendo’s approach to digital gaming in the Switch 2 era? What changes would you like to see come to digital games? Let us know in the comments down below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more breaking gaming news.