Nintendo’s big Partner Direct took place earlier this week, during which we sawa few new game announcementsfrom third-party studios, along with a handful of ports.Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero,Persona 3 Reload, andthe newly announced Octopath Traveler 0were all welcome reveals, but the excitement was very quickly ruined after the show.
That’s because many of the titles shown off during the show were later confirmed to be Game-Key Cards, which has been a controversial aspect of the Switch 2 ever since it launched.Persona 3 ReloadandOctopath Traveler 0 in particulardrew a lot of ire, specifically due to them being big single-player games with gigantic publishers in Sega and Square Enix behind them.
Nintendo Switch 2 Called “Undesirable” Thanks To All The Recently Revealed Game-Key Card Titles
Throw these titles intothe ever-growing pile of third-party games using Game-Key Cards, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify buying third-party games on the system at all. It’s causing the opinion of the Switch 2 to drop quite rapidly among a lot of gamers,one of whom is Twitter user Orbalology, who says that the console feels “undesirable” thanks to the lack of proper support from third-party publishers.
In Orbalology’s semi-viral post, she says that most of the games using Game-Key Cards on Switch 2 have a physical version on PS5, or could simply just run better on PC, making them far better places to actually buy them. Thus, there isn’t really a reason to buy third-party games on the system anymore, especially with the popularity of the Steam Deck, and that her opinion on the system has done “a complete 180” compared to the first Switch.
It’s an understandable criticism, and is especially true when you have companies like Sega charging full price for Persona 3 Reload, despite it being two years old and will run worse on Switch 2. It’s unclear how much these Game-Key Cards are affecting sales, but if you truly care about video game preservation right now, you may as just pretend as those third-party publishers just aren’t supporting the system.
