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.

Pay a premium for a physical copy of your game, and the cartridge may not contain the actual game. Only on Nintendo Switch 2.

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[–] kipo@lemm.ee 7 points 5 days ago (8 children)

So they essentially stuffed a download code into a physical cartridge to make people feel like they are getting something?

Isn't that needless and wasteful? Isn't it also going to trick unsuspecting people into buying something they think is a physical version of a game but isn't?

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They've been doing that for decades now. Lots of PC games had a box and CD, but the only thing on it was a stub installer to run Steam. Or even if it had the full game, you'd have to download a giant day-one patch to fix all the bugs fixed between the image going gold and the actual release day.

[–] vegetvs@kbin.earth 2 points 5 days ago

Nothing new here. PS3 games were famous for requiring an install from the optical media to the internal drive first, and then also downloading some mandatory major update before running. The role of the physical media was mostly symbolic.

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