Nintendo’s data-free, download-unlocking Game Key Cards have proven popular with game publishers, even as they’ve drawn ire from many fans of games stored on physical media. Now, though, a developer on Star Wars Outlaws is saying that a technical limitation of the Switch 2’s Game Card interface may be driving some publishers away from fully physical game releases on the Switch 2.
Writing in a Bluesky thread discussing the performance of the Outlaws’ Switch 2 port [which is only available as a download or Game Key Card], Snowdrop Audio Architect Rob Bantin chimed in to discuss why a full physical release wasn’t in the cards for the Switch 2.
“Snowdrop relies heavily on disk streaming for its open world environments, and we found the Switch 2 cards simply didn’t give the performance we needed at the quality target we were going for,” Bantin wrote. “I think if we’d designed a game for Switch 2 from the ground up it might have been different. As it was, we’d build a game around the SSDs of the initial target platforms, and then the Switch 2 came along a while later. In this case, I think our leadership made the right call.”
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