Star Wars Outlaws made its Nintendo Switch 2 debut last week, but rather than releasing the game on a physical cartridge Ubisoft opted for the Game-Key Card.
No data is stored in this card – instead it includes a digital license that requires the full game to be downloaded to the console’s internal storage to play.
Ubisoft’s decision to put Outlaws on a Game-Key Card became a topic of discussion on social media, with Digital Foundry’s John Linnerman pondering whether it was to do with the cost of manufacturing the Switch 2’s 64GB cartridge.
In response, Ubisoft audio architect Rob Bantin said the Switch 2 cards “simply don’t give the performance” needed to run the developer’s engine Snowdrop.
“Snowdrop relies heavily on disk streaming for its open world environments, and we found the Switch 2 cards simply don’t give the performance we needed at the quality target we were going for”, Bantin wrote.
“I don’t recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion – probably because it was moot.”
They continued: “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 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC), and then the Switch 2 came along a while later.
“In this case I think our leadership made the right call.”
Overall, Nintendo’s decision to introduce Game-Key Cards has been a controversial one. Especially when it comes to game preservation, as many are concerned that these cards will be dependent on servers supporting them.
Once those servers are turned off, as happened with the Wii U and 3DS eShops, these games may become unplayable. You can read more about developers’ concerns with Game-Key Cards and game preservation here.