That’s valid and there’s not much filthy about it at all. Digital is convenient and I see why many people are all in on that, even though it’s not for me.

But GKCs are kinda whack from that angle too. Adds clutter IRL, have to switch between cards; basically most of the same disadvantages you see from physical, without some of the upsides.

I think there is another segment though, that just wants access to games as cheap as possible. GKC may, over time, work well in that sense.

Basically, but there are some differences. It’s more like a physical key to a digital game, rather than a one-time unlock code.

GKC:

• No data on card, requires internet & Nintendo service first use
• Installs to storage, taking up space
• Requires card inserted into system to play
• Box is an artifact to display on store and home shelves
• Freely re-sell or buy used

Full physical:

• All data on card, no internet dependence
• Only requires enough space for a save game
  • (Unless you download patches and updates, but still takes less storage)
• Requires card inserted into system to play
• Box is an artifact to display on store and home shelves
• Freely re-sell or buy used

Full digital:

• Internet & Nintendo service required to purchase.
  • Long term, store front will likely go down much earlier than re-download servers
• Installs to storage, taking up space
• No need to put card in system, play any digital game installed at any time
• Retail presence is limited to codes, either printed on cardboard or code-in-a-box
• No need to store any artifacts, saving valuable space in your home
• Unable to re-sell or buy used.

So, it’s just a slightly different mix of pros and cons. Gotta pick which things you care about.

I feel like the ‘negative response’ to these is probably overstated. I just really doubt your average person, who happily keeps their game console online and patiently downloads an update every time they insert a new game, cares at all.

To be clear, I do not like GKCs myself and will not buy one. But I don’t think folks should get their hopes up.

There are tons of factors here, from loud niches influencing general opinion, to the concrete sales games are/are not getting, to the high cost of storage expansion on Switch 2. So hopefully the winds do change a little over time. But if a 3rd party publisher can’t squeeze out margin per copy on a game, it (mostly) doesn’t matter how many or few copies they sell.

😃 Fantastic, thank you! Exactly what I’ve been hoping for!

Tuned in for the last few minutes, and pleasantly surprised to see a lot of cool games.

Really odd to drop UFO 50 in a montage, but glad that’s coming.

Personally hoping to see several of these games get physical editions, even if limited.

Nice! I remember this looking promising before, but not having Linux support. Now it seems like 2.0 is properly cross-platform, so I’ll have to give it a spin.

Ooh, that sounds handy, I’ll have to look into it.

Perfect thing for the Switch 2 mouse controls. Surprised they didn’t add it at launch. Good to see it available though!

Pretty sure I’ll be disappointed with this, when inevitably things shown are only on game-key cards or the eshop.

Outside of my hang-ups though, it’ll be good to hear about third party stuff. Switch 2 seems lacking in support outside Nintendo.

The term for this is openwashing. Seems like it’s been ramping up for a while. Any software or tech vendors know that open(source) is an attractive point, especially to devs. But they don’t want to deal with the realities of it.

Most famous example in recent times is OpenAI, which has that name but not much else.

This headline is somewhat misleading.

They mean most of Allianz’s (1.4m) North America customers, not data of most people in the US.

First read of the headline, I thought it was another Equifax level thing - where a single company has way too much data.

It’s not in-store, but if an app is relatively mainstream it very well might have reviews on https://alternativeto.net/

A lot of interesting stuff there. Sounds like a lot of care went into the sound and music design. The screenshot of the Switch 1 DKB prototype was cool.

One quote that stood out in particular:

Takahashi: There’s a lot of leeway in terms of progression in this game. For example, locations or parts of the story you can skip without suffering any consequences. When the game progresses in a way we hadn’t intended, we call it a “sequence break” in development terminology. Typically, in game development, restrictions are put in place to prevent this from happening, but since this game is all about destruction, we wanted people to play freely. Truth be told, restrictions make things a lot easier for us developers. (Laughs) But please do experiment.

We’ll see how it manifests, but in general I like when they loosen up on the guard rails.

The narration was really cheesy. And it is a little hard to stay tuned in when he goes ‘look you can run! You can jump!’.

DK’s moveset looks good though - he seems like he’s fun to control.

Was a great showing! I was already on board because I dig the destruction angle. I still have some minor misgivings with some of the art direction.

But overall this presentation kept hitting with feature after feature. I hope (and semi-expect) it’s not a case where they’ve already shown most everything about the game though. Looking forward to playing next month!

Probably means no general direct this summer.

But that’s also what we thought when the Switch 1 direct happened right before the Switch 2 thing. Crazier stuff has happened. /shrug

Yep. And to further mitigate any rage induction, the store replaced them.

https://bsky.app/profile/megannicolett.bsky.social/post/3lqv6v72abk2m

So yeah, I think that post is spot on that it’s kinda no big deal in any direction.

Sure, that’s on Nintendo a little bit.

But who staples things directly to the box of a collector’s item or an of expensive piece of electronics? Store was asking for trouble. The staple would have bothered me even if it didn’t touch the screen.

Kinda, but I think phrasing it that way overstates how bad it is right now. Generally, you buy a physical game and you get something that’s a reasonably complete product, playable to the end without ever patching.

Basically every game has a patch, but it’s usually minor bug fixes, optimizations, or extra content that’s not so important.

Truly broken and deeply unfinished games shipping on cart/disc are (were?) still kinda the exception.

Good question. I always assumed the updates were cumulative (as in, a later version would contain anything needed from older versions) and that pretty much every cartridge required some firmware that was newish at time of release… such that yeah, each cart would have a version of firmware update on there.

But there are a lot of assumptions on my part there. And the Switch 2 situation could be a totally different kind of thing for all we know.