Consumers have been frustrated over Nintendo's new Game-Key Cards for the Switch 2 ever since they were revealed. These physical cartridges that lack game data on them and act more as a digital unlock function have sparked controversy over preservation concerns and desiring full physical retail releases. The endless debates spurred a former Capcom employee to take to social media and attempt to reason why Nintendo is doing this. Masakazu Sugimori, known for composing soundtracks for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Ghost Trick, and Viewtiful Joe, says that Nintendo's methods are significant in reducing piracy.

“It’s unfair that something you bought becomes unplayable when the service ends.” As a player myself, I can understand this perspective, and I sometimes feel the same way. But, well… Do physical items outside of digital products last forever? Most of the time, they don’t, right? Physical things always have a lifespan and will eventually break. Digital products, on the other hand, generally don’t have a lifespan.

According to him, Nintendo's choices in raising game prices allows other publishers, who might be struggling with development costs and inflation to follow Nintendo's lead. By ending support for older games, it provides more jobs in order to port those games to current hardware. Sugimori says that it might be an idealistic viewpoint, but he believes that Nintendo has enough money to be successful regardless of these changes, and that they're doing these things to protect the industry as a whole.

・Keycards 　→ Measures against illegal copying, reducing the risk of holding inventory
・Raising game prices 　→ Waving the flag so that game companies, struggling with recent inflation, can raise prices
・Terminating online services for older hardware 　→ Setting a “lifespan.” This makes it easier for companies to re-release games on new hardware. To put it further, it creates the job of “porting.”

Source

 

[Deleted member 702243]

They are defending the game key cards entirely in the wrong way. I stand by my opinion that they are not a bad thing. They give developers who already weren't going to release games on the game cartridge another option other than paying for a cartridge that contains the entire game. We already saw this happening with many of the third party games on the switch 1 where developers would either just put a download code in the box or used the smallest capacity cartridge as possible and made you download the game anyways. The game key card is a middle ground between digital only and physical that allows you to retain the resale of your owned games while saving costs and (if the switch 2 is anything like the switch 1) higher load speed. There are many reasons to be upset at Nintendo about the switch 2 but this is absolutely not one of them.

they could possibly have had the games on switch 1 cartriges instead and require installing from the cartridge to the memory or micro sd card before playing, and then you use the cartridge as the key that allows playing, but then people would have complained that their physical copy still took up space and that it has no advantage over digital copies anymore. they simply cant win, the only solution people would accept is for publishers to release games on full cartridges and eat the ~15-20 whatever dollars each cartridge costs while keeping the price at 60 for the consumer. and the price needs to stay at 60 forever for the consumer regardless of how expensive the physical media becomes for the publisher as new consoles and new generations are made, and the physical media needs to continue containing the full game without needing to download even just part of it

it doesn't take a genius to figure out that unless some major breakthrough happens that can make high capacity high speed flash storage very cheap to produce, this simply isnt sustainable

 

[Plume]

Once Crapcom minded, always Crapcom minded.

Reminder that Crapcom are the guys adding a second layer of DRM and anti-tempering (Which is so terribly implemented it destroys performance half the time) in their games on PC because they're mad that people mod their games or pirate the 70-100 bucks of day one DLCs that are already bundled within the files of their games.

Considering what this guy says, he's still clearly in that same mindset.

Want to protect the industry? It's pretty simple: Make good games people would like to buy and own. Don't try to milk your player dry with the shittiest DLCs possible (lol character edit vouchers in singleplayer games). Respect your players.

 

[SecureBoot]

Literally no good points were made. At least Ubisoft had a plausible reason

 

[Kioku]

Per people that love piracy they won't see it as good. What the public fails to remember is that if the corporates do not make enough revenue they won't have enough revenue to produce higher quality games and stabilization. Your purchases is what powers corporates to produce more. The more they sell the more they'll think they're putting out quality.

The irony in this statement while I stare at games like Borderlands 4. Also, since Capcom is the main topic, didn’t they just give us the worst performing Monster Hunter game recently? Consumers generally don’t care about performance. If the game runs, that’s a win in their book.

 

[LuminousGaze]

So they're an industry shill.

 

[DragonMals]

I just got out my 36 YEAR OLD SEGA GENESIS and 40 YEAR OLD NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT yesterday and those sons of bitches worked just the same the day I bought it.

Still have a working SNES, too.

I'm just glad that Nintendo isn't doing the Game Key Cards themselves. I knew that these other companies would have a jab at them and potentially make it the only thing they're exclueively known for. Isn't it also true that with the Key Cards, should the services for when the card gets removed, then the entire card is unusable?

 

[K3Nv4]

The irony in this statement while I stare at games like Borderlands 4. Also, since Capcom is the main topic, didn’t they just give us the worst performing Monster Hunter game recently? Consumers generally don’t care about performance. If the game runs, that’s a win in their book.

If companies didn't have those millions we wouldn't get any of these titles at all.

 

[Ondrashek06]

As far as I'm concerned, the ONLY positive thing about key cards is that they're better than CiaB.... that's it.

I would be happy with them if they completely replaced CiaB. Instead, we still get CiaB in addition to games that would normally just be full cartridges being converted to these stupid game keys.

 

[LuminousGaze]

Per people that love piracy they won't see it as good. What the public fails to remember is that if the corporates do not make enough revenue they won't have enough revenue to produce higher quality games and stabilization. Your purchases is what powers corporates to produce more. The more they sell the more they'll think they're putting out quality.

Edit: Grammatical.

I couldn't care less about them being able to continue to make games if I don't actually get to own the games I paid for with the money I worked for.

 

[KiiWii]

Worst take ever.

Physical media from the 70s still survive in the year 2025 with little to no issue at all.

But look how many digital games have been removed/revoked or had their live service ended: this will happen with keycards too.

Regardless, digital games get dumped just as easily as physical media.

They’re chatting absolute shit because they have to.

 

[DeadSkullzJr]

Simplified Translation...

Former Capcom Employee:
"We want to control what you play and download."

Shoves hand up ass to obtain excuse.

"Physical cartridges don't last forever."

My Thoughts:
Ignoring the fact that neither does NAND, hard drives, solid state drives, etc.. A strawman argument since absolutely nothing actually lasts forever, physically or digitally. Essentially, calling out the lifespan of a physical product, whilst inducing an artificial lifespan for digital products.

"The raised costs help mitigate inflation issues for developers."

My Thoughts:
Wrong, if you can't even get an optimized product out for release, the only thing this does is incentivize more shit releases for a higher cost. It was never about "helping" the industry, it was always about helping your pockets stay loaded, and maintain a roll of toilet paper made of money ready for your ass wipes, sitting next to you in the bathroom (not to mention the stacks sitting in the cabinets). This is artificial inflation, nobody told you or anyone else to raise the prices. This is just Covid like excuses all over again.

"This also reduces piracy."

My Thoughts:
No it doesn't. I'm not stupid, there are plenty of ways to obtain digital software, no matter the infrastructure. Difficulty may vary, but it will always be possible. Your solution literally requires that you waste physical resources in the real world for a digital gain. Now I'm not a tree hugger, but this is just two faced.

I'm all for supporting developers with hard earned money. But this is ridiculous, we don't even get good products anymore, yet you expect me to feel sympathy? I already don't support the psychotic, loose cannon, behavior people have who advocate for abusive levels of piracy. However, even I understand that to a very marginal degree, piracy exists for one reason or another. Maybe not all reasons are good or valid reasons, but there definitely are some out there worth talking about.

This whole thing is just reads off like someone loves money too much. They are willing to compromise any sense of logic, common sense, wisdom even, just to maintain that constant flow. All I can say is, karma is a bitch, and mark my words, you WILL reap what you sow. If entire empires can collapse, so can a minuscule by comparison company. Maybe gaming needs to die for a bit, and it needs to hurt, because at this rate, nobody is learning anything the easy way.

 

[handy333]

I'm still upset about DJMax Ray.

 

[Krazyeye]

what a crapcom

 

[spotanjo3]

NSW 2 sucks so is key cards. It will be cracked someday anyway.

 

[Darth Meteos]

oh brother, this guy STINKS

 

[tech3475]

I would be happy with them if they completely replaced CiaB. Instead, we still get CiaB in addition to games that would normally just be full cartridges being converted to these stupid game keys.

Yeah the hope was this would be a replacement for CIAB. But.... we are seeing even more of those this gen now too. Some devs don't even care to pay for key-cards.

I suspect that if it wasn't for game key cards they would all just be CiaB.

 

[Delerious]

I realize he's former Capcom, but still... Kinda liking Capcom less and less as the years go by.

Also, the Switch 2 can't get hacked soon enough, given all these Key Card releases. If digital is the way these companies want to go, then I better be able to mod my games, manage my own save files, and have a backup of the game on my PC.

 

[yankii]

They’re chatting absolute shit because they have to.

This guy doesn't even work for Crapcom anymore, he's just being a retard.

 

[GengarsGhostlyGiggles]

Crapcom of course it is. Crapcom is one of the MOST user hostile game companies ever.
They updated decade old games to prevent mods and cheats.
You complete dummies! Let me f*cking my mod and cheat my OLD SINGLE PLAYER GAMES.

 

[CMDreamer]

I'll keep this for my argumentation:

Digital products, on the other hand, generally don’t have a lifespan.

He's saying this from the business point of view ofc, that digital content can be backed up for them to re-sell whenever they see fit.

But for the customers, once the servers attached to an E-Shop get taken down that digital content becomes unavailable for downloading and/or playing as they were intended.

That allow the company to re-sell the customer the very same content once more on a "new" server. It "might" not be an issue if they wouldn't charge the full price of it every time they re-sell that same digital content, but we all know it's not like that.

I understand that when we buy digital content we're paying for a usage license, nothing more, but that licence voids once the servers attached to the related service (E-Shop) get taken down for whatever reason. The customer in the end, gets nothing to play after this, if, for whatever reason, their console fails and get repaired, or the storage device suffer a problem and gets replaced.

I've always defended complete physical game releases, and not just a piece of plastic to allow me to download the digital content. This business model -as mentioned by some user here on GBATemp- represents pollution to the environment because those GKC can be used only once, and after that, they're just plastic waste.

I do and always will, prefer complete physical releases, because I like to have the games available at will whenever I want, and because I pay for them to be able to do so.