A begrudging defense of Nintendo’s “Game-Key cards” for the Switch 2

Summary

At this point, game companies probably aren't choosing between shipping either a regular-old game card or a Game-Key card—they're likely deciding whether to ship a Game-Key card or nothing. Digital-only has become the default model for most independently developed games and smaller releases from big publishers. When some of those games get physical releases at all, it's handled through a specialty retailer like Limited Run Games, which will package up a small handful of them to satisfy physical game dead-enders. I count myself as a member of that group, by the way, partly because I like having Things To Look At On A Shelf. But mostly because a game cartridge is a useful object to me in a way that a downloaded game is not. I can pass a game card to a friend so they can see if their kids like the game without having to spend money on it first. I can go halvsies with a friend on a game we both want to play but don't want to pay $60 for. I can sell a game card when I'm done with it for some portion of its original value—and occasionally, for particularly rare out-of-print games, for significantly more than I paid for it in the first place. This is called "sharing things," and it's how owning stuff has worked for as long as people have owned stuff. I can lend or borrow a book, I can lend or borrow a tool, I can lend or borrow a phone charger. But it's something that's being steadily eroded in the streaming and digital download age, when companies and a certain kind of Internet commenter/social media poster will pedantically explain to you that you are not buying a thing, you are buying a license to view or use a thing. The main reason I stick with physical games is because that sucks! That's a bad arrangement! A Game-Key card, for all its weird faults and inconveniences, still manages to clear that bar for me. It's not a non-transferrable title tied to my Nintendo account for all time, restricted to whatever sharing mechanism Nintendo decides I can use. It is still a thi...