I picked up a physical copy of Star Wars Outlaws for the Switch 2 (compensated affiliate link) on a black Friday sale the otherday. But unlike games on the first generation Switch console that ship the actual game data on the cartridge, the Switch 2 games often ship on “Game-Key” cards that are essentially a physical key to unlock and download a digital version of the game.
You can learn more in my latest Gadget Picks channel video.
When I inserted the card, the system immediately began pulling down about 25 gigabytes of data. It’s the kind of download that takes a while, so I let the console do its thing. The card itself is still required after installation, so the game will not load or stay loaded without the cartridge inserted.
This game goes a step further, requiring an Ubisoft online login before being able to play. After logging in, I tested what would happen without connectivity. Switching the console to airplane mode triggered warning messages, but the game did eventually offer an offline mode. It’s unclear how long it will allow offline play before asking to phone home again. At minimum, it does boot and run without a network connection once authenticated.
The game itself performs better than I expected on the new Switch hardware. For a large open-world title, it feels surprisingly at home on the system.
Ubisoft has said their decision not to ship the full game on a cartridge has more to do with cartridge speed than manufacturing cost, claiming the consoles internal or SD-based storage offers faster data streaming.
Even so, they could have included the data on a cart and copied it over during installation. That would have given players a long-term fallback if the download servers disappear in the future. Recently I looked back at some digital purchases I made, with many of my purchased iPhone app store games no longer available to download.
Sometimes a simple retail purchase turns into a small investigation, and in this case it revealed another step in the slow drift from physical games to digital tokens. Not quite the future the old cartridges prepared us for, but here we are—tapping plastic to download data and hoping the servers stay alive long enough for one more play session.
One advantage a physical Game-Key allows for is selling the game when you’re done playing it. That is one thing digital store purchases do not allow for. Given how well Switch games tend to hold their value, it’s still possible to live in this new digital world while keeping some degree of transferability.
That is, of course if Nintendo keeps the download servers active well into the future.