Yesterday afternoon, Canadian retailer Video Games Plus (VGP) made a rather bold claim on social media about how Nintendo handles physical editions of Switch 2 games. According to a now deleted post on Twitter, the company wrote, “As we’ve stated many times, we’d actively try to get existing Game-Key Cards titles reprinted as full-on-cart versions, but at the moment, there’s a Nintendo policy preventing that.” If true, that certainly sucks.
Earlier in the week, however, Nintendeal had responded to an inquiry on Twitter about whether Nintendo could re-release Game-Key Cards as proper physical versions. Their logic was that code-in-a-box games had been “upgraded” to Game-Key Cards, meaning it should be possible for Game-Key Cards to get the same transition. Nintendeal answered, “If my understanding is correct, a publisher would need to submit a completely new build.”
What I think is happening here is that Nintendo has a policy in place not to deter full physical releases, but to prevent confusion for customers shopping for Switch 2 games. If a publisher opts for a game-key card release, but then a year later decides to change its mind, that would cause frustration for players looking to build a physical collection. As Nintendeal even suggests, a game such as Cronos: The New Dawn would need something like “Cronos: The New Dawn – Complete Edition” to happen for Nintendo to allow a change in format. That way, previous buyers aren’t being “forced” to double-dip.
VGP even suggested as much in an also-deleted response to the initial post making the rounds. They stated, “The policy is in place for certain reasons that make sense … Nintendo is not intentionally stopping publishers just for the sake of it, there are legit reasons for this policy to be in place at the moment.” It really does seem more like preventing customer confusion rather than strong-arming publishers to accept a controversial format.
There are a bunch of examples you can find which contradict this supposed policy (one such is Fullmetal Schoolgirl, which was a Game-Key Card initially before Limited Run Games did a re-print), but it should be stated that this has not been confirmed by Nintendo. It just makes a lot of sense given the prevalence of Game-Key Cards.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
