The Nintendo Switch 2 is obviously what everyone wants to talk about today, and looking at what's being said on social media, it's surprising to see Don Mattrick and the Xbox One launch from 2013 being brought up on multiple occasions!
Looking into this a bit more, it's to do with the Game-Key Cards that will be adopted by certain Nintendo Switch 2 games. Basically, when there's not enough room to fit a game on a cartridge, you'll get a makeshift cartridge that has to install the title over the internet - and then still has to be inserted in order to play the game.
Game-key cards are different from regular game cards, because they don’t contain the full game data. Instead, the game-key card is your "key" to downloading the full game to your system via the internet.
After it’s downloaded, you can play the game by inserting the game-key card into your system and starting it up like a standard physical game card.
That's what Nintendo says, and now here's a look at some of the Xbox-related reaction we've spotted:
And by the way, it's not just this Game-Key Card feature that's bringing up the Xbox One references! Windows Central, for example, has pointed out the similarities with game sharing and the new camera for the Switch 2:
Now, to be honest, I don't personally look at the Game-Key Card thing as being very similar to the Xbox One launch and its original focus on being a permanently online console, as it's really just an evolution of the code-in-a-box strategy that has been employed with many Switch games up to this point. A lot of the anger around the Xbox One in 2013 was that you wouldn't be able to play offline or resell games, which is not the case with the Switch 2.
What it does signal though, is that once again, the preservation of physical games is becoming harder and harder to maintain. Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo now all adopt the practice of forcing downloads over the internet for many titles, and when those servers eventually shut off, some of those discs and cartridges will potentially become useless.
That's unfortunately the way it's going to be - and Nintendo is simply following the trend with a feature like this.
What do you make of the whole Game Key-Card and Xbox One comparison? Tell us down below.
[source en-americas-support.nintendo.com]
Comments 29
Xbox you should have taken it to everyone with the series consoles and exclusive games and gamepass.
The other two are no where near as strong games wise etc as they used to be.
After what I watched today for switch 2 it will be the first Nintendo console I don’t have day one since the SNES and that includes the Wii U.
Unfortunately for many today the overriding thought is on the price of the games.
Really overshadows a decent price of the console
I think the console and the hardware is great on paper, and fairly priced. The trouble is the lack of games (they will come) but mostly the game pricing, a 50% hike in some cases.
Now that's a pretty low bar 😂 but at least we can watch this space and truly see if Nintendo gets that free pass that was discussed not long ago.
It's a different story nowadays this is not a scary thing anymore!!
Everybody talking Switch 2 and I'm just sitting here pissed about DK's redesign.
This is a false equivalency. It's like buying a switch game that has just a code inside, only worse because you have to keep using the cartridge. But if you look at switch games that do this it's only a small percentage (and mostly Ubisoft, and WB games), and Nintendo doesn't do this for their own games.
Xbox wanted to do this with every single game, and it wasn't the only thing they wanted to do that got fans mad. Xbox deserved the backlash it got.
With Nintendo, I think this is more of a compromise because 3rd party developers don't know how to optimize games anymore and game sizes can get up to 100 GB.
Just wait till the masses get confused between Switch and Switch 2 like they did with Wii and Wii U.
Will be fun to pay $10 more for the "physical" version only to have it be a key.
If everyone would have taken the time to read all the details you would have been able to share your games with up to 10 people on your friends list. That would have been great for people like me with a big family. If the kids wanted to play a game together in coop I had to buy multiple copies of the same game. The biggest majority of people were already connected to the net 24/7 even way back then.
@Tasuki i don't think the wii u sold poorly because people got confused. I think they just had the impossible task of convincing the most casual players ever to buy another system that was just a slightly better version of the same thing. They did the impossible task of getting non gamers like people in old folks homes to buy a videogame console but there was 0% chance of people like that buying the followup no matter what they did.
The switch will have a similar issue but to a lesser extent. A ton of these ultra casuals are just not going to be interested because buying the first one was such an out of character purchase to begin with.
@Kieduss absolutely hideous. Not funky at all
I found it hypocritical how nobody has an issue with the switch 2s camera but were up in arms over the Xbox ones Kinect camera
@BacklogBrad I agree. Video game consoles are expensive and not exactly impulse buys. All the early adopters are going to be fans and as such will know the difference between a Wii and a Wii U.
If anyone bothered to look at how Wii games (not the console, just the games) performed it's easy to see that 3rd party developers mostly released shovel ware and casual games. Not to mention that Nintendo of America actively tried to prevent some of the more hardcore games like Pandora's Tower and Fatal Frame from coming to the west.
Wii U failed for the reason you said. They convinced non-gamers to pick one up, while losing the hardcore gamers to Xbox and Playstation.
Nintendo clearly don’t want a market where you buy the cart, gain a digital licence and then sell it on for someone else to do the same ad nauseum.
@BacklogBrad people definitely got confused and I was one of them. I thought it was a Wii accessory.
@BacklogBrad That was part of the reason the other part was the name calling it a Wii U made people think it was an accessory for the Wii. So you had parents buying Wii U games with kids that owned Wiis and stuff like that. You are going to have the same thing with people and Switch and Switch 2.
@Tasuki just like people got confused when PlayStation 2 was the sequel to PlayStation and it went on to be the best-selling console of all time.
Your point about Wii and Wii U being confusing is fair, Nintendo Switch 2 is clearly a sequel console to Nintendo Switch, and it's not the first console in history to be a numbered sequel. Parents will be fine.
I see a few big problems. The launch price is $630 or $700 with Mario Cart. The ps5 w/ disc is $650 with the Series X around the same price, if you can find one. The voice chat sounds good but it's only for paid members, just like xbox gold and could be problematic if not monitored. Lots of features but not all of them are particularly useful. And they are introduced Switch 2 versions and offering paid upgrade from the Switch, very much like the ps4 to ps5 instead of the smart upgrade like the Xbox. And they are continuing the trend of offering older titles via paid subscription only, not something I am a fan of.
I don't give a crap right now. The release date is way too early for my taste, I still have a lot to play and complete on the regular Switch and luckily, Metroid Prime 4 is on Switch as well.
I'm not that receivable anymore to Nintendo than I used to be, when I was younger.
I definitely won't buy a Switch 2 that soon, also I pretty pricey and not that much cheaper than a Series X.
And i already have a Series X, which I use way more than my Switch.
Microsoft is a software and analytics company. They're really good at predicting the future and analyzing the market, but really bad at actually marketing their products to real people. They jump the gun and deal with the fallout because they don't really get how emotional and illogical consumers are. It happened with the Zune, it happened with the Windows Phone, it happened with the Xbox One, and it continues to happen with their cloud and multiplatform pushes. Heck, it already happened with their multiplatform pushes. They were the first console to support putting their first party games on PC and in some cases Nintendo Switch, and they saw a LOT of backlash for it. Now that's died down and Sony is doing the same and getting praised for it.
That's not pointing fingers at anyone, but saying this is nothing new or expected. It's what Microsoft will continue to have to contend with as long as they don't properly learn how to execute a consumer electronics business (and it's not like they really have to change; the Xbox One failed and still pulled in over 10 billion; Microsoft has long since dwarfed Nintendo in terms of gaming revenue).
I really feel it's more unfortunate in how... tame Microsoft was with this generation. They almost seemed scared of facing backlash, but the thing is a lot of what the Xbox One tried selling gamers was a good move for growing and reaching new customers. It's true that consoles don't just compete with each other and do with other forms of entertainment and it's true that those other forms of entertainment have grown and continue to threaten consoles. We now have iPhones with playing Assassin's Creed Mirage and Amazon using Luna to bring PC games to fire TVs. On the flip side consoles have just naturally evolved to include stuff like every major streaming service. The console market on the whole has stalled and I think pitching a console as the ultimate entertainment device wouldn't hurt. At the very least doing so with say the Xbox Series S (the all digital, much smaller, and reasonably low priced budget console). Xbox got burnt in the Xbox One era for jumping the gun, but did they really learn any lessons; as much as I love my Series X and S it does honestly feel like Xbox played this gen as safe as possible out of fear more than anything else. And some stuff I just don't understand why we don't have it anymore? Like was the snap feature killing resources or something? I could believe it, but I wouldn't mind a "using snap might cause games to perform worse" warning or something. I'd still love it anyway with casual games. They were the first to make proper use of a camera and microphone on a system level, but they did such a bad job presenting the tech (and chose such a bad time) that there were a vocal group of consumers genuinely afraid that Microsoft was spying on them. So as a result they just dropped the idea when they could've easily incorporated it into the Series X and S without the need of the kinect and then made use of voice assistants and the camera. Oh well.
Don't forget about the paid tutorial game as well smh. I definitely won't be picking this up.
@kevinm360 I don't know the Wii U was clearly a sequel to the Wii yet people got confused. Clearly you underestimated how dumb people can be.
The game key card is still like a physical card just without data. It's not tied to your account. So you can still trade it in or lend it to a friend like you would a regular card.
I'm just put off from the price and I haven't seen any games I would play. I could use the money elsewhere like buy a digital PS5 or a steamdeck. play my pc games on the go sounds more better.
@HonestHick They're salty over the fact Final Fantasy 7 Intergrade hasn't been announced for Xbox yet while it got announced for Switch 2.
Just like the Switch 1, it's an awful value if you don't use it as a portable. Nintendo marks up their hardware, and you're paying for a screen and battery you don't need. I wish they would sell a cheaper, non portable version.
@kevinm360 "Parents will be fine." We sure will be since most of us grew up playing video games and know enough about them not to get confused. It isn't 2005, parents today grew up playing video games, and ppl like the one you're replying to don't realize that.
I don’t see how both situations are related.
Microsoft wanted to tie a disc to an account, so you wouldn’t be able to lend or sell any disc game already tied to an account.
Nintendo is selling an empty cartridge that only allows you to download the game but you still need to have the cartridge inserted to play, and you can later sell or lend that empty cartridge and other person can download and play the game, which they already did with several games, only now it’s being standardized under “game-key card”.
Prices announced yesterday are egregious and absolutely deserve the heat they are getting, but this isn’t really what you’re making it seem.
Yeah, it really does feel like Switch 2 has the worst reveal since the Xbox One, but at least Microsoft had the good sense to quickly abandon everything that everyone hated about it.
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