“Historically, we’ve been very agnostic, right? We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily. We also have a platform that was just launched. We’re barely just over a year into NS2. It’s got both digital and physical – that capability. There’s no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well, so our position has been to be agnostic.”
Game keycards aren’t entirely the same as the digital model, as you can actually lend them or sell them at least (for a limited amount of years of course).
They’re not good, but they’re definitely a step better than all others do, including Steam (excluding GoG)
Gkc’s have the worst of both worlds in a single piece of plastic. The only good thing of them is that they partly share the freedom of a physical media while the key is valid.
The key can be revoked anytime. The servers can be closed anytime. And on top of that, you still have to put it in your console to play the game, taking space and making you switch cards on every game you play.
A game key card is a strictly better code-in-box since key cards aren’t tied to a Nintendo account and can be transfered and sold. The worse thing about them is the misleading advertising and incentivizing execs to cut costs.
I don’t think the key can be revoked, because the card is the key.
The main issue is the same as a digital game - the servers going down.
Though having to put it in to play is also annoying.
The key can absolutely be revoked. It’s enough to tell the server that said key is not allowed to download the game anymore and you’re done. It is extremely easy to do since every key is unique.
And if you think it’s not possible, wait until someone dumps one of them on the internet and someone else finds a way to copy it on a new cart to duplicate it. You’ll see how fast nintendo revokes the key.
Ok, fair, but then you could say the same about consoles / PCs themselves.
In fact, what we are arguing is that a gkc has the same downsides as a digital store (like pc’s and consoles), including the possibility of the key being revoked.
Who controls the key? It’s not the consumer. Nintendo can revoke these things any time. It’s not yours.
Actually, it’s who controls the server, not the key. The reason they’re called game key cards if because they’re literally a key. You own the key.
The issue is, they own the servers, and again, once those are down, you can’t download the game anymore. The card is just used to download the game tho, and verify that digital copy is valid with your key, so whoever lasts uses it once they go down are the final owners of the digital game. Unlike a physical game, where it doesn’t matter if the company itself goes bankrupt.
Like I said, they’re a step up in that they’re this weird hybrid of the standard digital game front and a physical item you can at least lend and sell for some time. But they’re not as good as a physical copy or a drm free digital copy.