admin 
Since the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 in June, players have been pretty miffed to discover that the physical versions of many games don’t actually contain the game at all. Instead they’re so-called “game-key cards,” essentially a phony game cart that only contains an instruction to download the game from Nintendo’s servers. Until now, it’s something that’s only affected third-party titles, albeit some very big-name games. But now—with March 5, 2026’s Pokémon Pokopia—the phenomenon will seemingly affect a Nintendo-published game for the first time.
While this isn’t fully confirmed, it’s all but certain after Nintendo simultaneously announced a March 5 release date for the recently revealed Animal Crossing-like Pokémon Pokopia, and a video explaining how game-key cards work that used Pokopia as an example.
Game-key cards have caused a huge amount of consternation among those who want to be able to simply buy and own a game, knowing it will be theirs and available to play forever. While Xbox and PlayStation consoles have long been plagued by shipping with discs containing just a fraction of a game’s code, or none at all, it’s not something that afflicted Nintendo consoles until the Switch 2. On every previous Nintendo device, if you bought a physical game for it, you can still install and play it today, going right back to the Game Boy. But no longer. And it’s seemingly happening for incredibly stupid reasons.
For reasons no one but Nintendo seems to know, the Switch 2 only offers 64GB carts to publishers for their games to ship on, with the price (according to Digital Foundry) set at $23 a piece. That’s far bigger than most people need, and obliterates profits, so with Nintendo offering no other options, publishers are naturally picking the only other option, the fake carts. (In other cases, like Star Wars Outlaws, it’s about transfer speeds from the cart to the system without installing on the Switch 2’s SSD.)
It’s absolutely fascinating that it’s only now that Nintendo intends to use a game-key card for the first time that the company has felt the need to explain them to its audience. In the jaunty video, it explains how it’s selling you an empty box as if it’s doing you a favor, using Pokémon Pokopia as its example throughout. The game, which is “only” 10GB, would therefore also make using the 64GB carts extremely expensive, even for Nintendo, a fact which is likely driving this decision. But, you ask, why not just make cheaper 16GB and 32GB carts, too? Well, yes, great question.
So why buy the boxes at all, if all you’re doing is adding an extra series of steps and a huge amount of wasteful plastic and shipping to what amounts to just downloading a game anyway? Well, the one advantage that remains is that you can—for now—use the same game-key card in a different Nintendo Switch 2, and thus share your game with your friends without having to go through that god-awful time-limited digital sharing feature that was added to the console. You can even (audible gasp) sell them when you’re done.
However, it remains a massive disappointment that now even Nintendo is using this preservation-destroying option for its first-party titles. The day the servers are switched off, which we know will be far too soon, none of these carts will do a single thing and the game you bought will be lost forever.
