Last week I wrote 2 main posts in reaction to the Nintendo Switch 2 announcement, and today we have new info on some of the open questions that lingered waaaay back then.

Game-key cards

I saw a remarkable amount of arguments against this new "physical" purchase option based on factually incorrect beliefs about how they worked, so I tried to explain it more clearly. I stand by that post today, and in an interview with Gamestop, Nintendo's Tetsuya Sasaki said:

So key cards will start up on the console or system that it is slotted into, so it's not tied to an account or anything

It's good to hear Nintendo say explicitly what was implicitly stated in their original post about these cards. Basically, after the initial install, these cards work like any other physical game in your Switch, and just like other physical game cards, you can only play their games when they're plugged into your console. And just like physical game cards, these games are not tied to your specific account, they can be played by anyone with that card, meaning you can resell them or share them all you want.

If you want a digital copy because you don't want to rely on keeping track of that card to play a game, then great, keep getting your games digitally. I personally do that 99% of the time and am happy with it. However, I think people who buy a game in a box in a store want something closer to that game card experience, and I think game-key cards are a much better solution for those buyers.

Gamespot did include this line in their article:

It's not clear yet why certain games will use the Game-Key format

My understanding is that it costs the publisher a relatively significant amount of money to print their game to a cartridge, and shipping a code is way cheaper, so they keep more margin on their game sales. I don't know what the difference in cost is for these game-key cards and full game prints, but my guess is that it's still a cost issue.

Game upgrades

Some Nintendo games are getting free updates to run better on the Switch 2, but a few games are getting paid updates. In last week's post, I said:

I'm not thrilled about paying to make them run better on new hardware, but my tone will depend largely on what the actual numbers are. $10? No big deal. $20? Ummmm. More than that? Get outta here!

Today, we got confirmation that these upgrades will be $9.99, so yeah, I'm not thrilled, but $10 isn't devastating, and is right in line with the upgrade pricing Sony has been doing for games like The Last of Us Part 2, Days Gone, and Horizon: Zero Dawn with their PS4-to-PS5 upgrades. I still prefer the PC world where there’s basically no concept of paid updates to improve performance, but this concept of old games running better on new hardware is pretty new for consoles. The PS4 Pro was the first time this really happened, and Nintendo has never done it before. Even their emulation efforts tend to have games run at their original frame rates and resolutions.

Cost for the pack-in "tutorial"

This one seems to have really rocked some people, and I would agree it's an odd choice for Nintendo. As I said last week:

Welcome Tour is the free tutorial app that looks like something most people would just skip over if it autoplayed during the console setup, but Nintendo is apparently charging for this. Weird.

Today we know that this game will cost $9.99 and honestly I don't know what Nintendo thinks they're doing here. I'm not mad about it, but clearly some people are. Is Nintendo really making so little margin on this whole Switch 2 family of products that they need to charge for the tutorial? Obviously someone in the finance department thinks they are.

Anyway, this didn't look interesting to me, so I won't be playing it anyway, even if it was free.

On $80 to $90 Mario Kart 8

Nintendo told IGN:

But honestly, this is a game that is so big and so vast and you will find so many little things in it to discover. And there's still some other secrets remaining that I think as people end up buying and playing the game, they're going to find this to be probably the richest Mario Kart experience they've ever had.

I don't deny the fact this game looks amazing, and the dollars-per-hour-of-gameplay I got from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was pretty insane, but as a consumer I'm certainly not excited about this. Also, while they insist there is tons to do in this game, I personally prefer when games have a lower cost of entry, and then give me the option to pay more if I end up loving it and want to experience all the things the game has to offer. Looking at a game that costs $20 more than even the highest end other games on the store shelf is a tough sell before you know you'll actually play it for ages.

Although I do sometimes have to remind myself that Nintendo games have cost $60 for nearly 30 years at this point. I posted this to Mastodon a few days ago related to this:

Without accounting for inflation, consoles have gotten more expensive, but games have been shockingly steady. Here’s a page from a Toys R Us ad from 1998 showing Ocarina of Time and other N64 games going for $60.

I’m not here to tell anyone to be happy about any price going up, but adjusted for inflation, N64 games were $120 in 2025 dollars. By many measures, it’s cheaper to play video games today than at any point in history.

The high end for hardware has certainly increased, but the cost of getting games to play has constantly dropped for decades.

It's not fun to hear that $90 for the physical version of the new Mario Kart is actually still cheaper than big games were 29 years ago, but adjusted for inflation, it kinda is.

For reference, the average movie theater ticket in 1996 was $4.42 for what it's worth, and it's $11.31 today. Again, I'm not saying I'm happy about it, but seeing this 1996 Toys-r-Us ad helped me appreciate how steady game prices have been over my lifetime.

The one unanswered question

How expensive will the Switch 2 be in the US? We still don’t know, but we still don’t know. We do know that the massive tariffs in place now were not factored into the $449 price point, so buckle up…

Just lick your Switch 2 cards once for fun

Let's close it out with a fun one. The Switch game cards had a coating put on them to make them taste disgusting to prevent kids from trying to eat them. They're doing the same thing with Switch 2 cards, which I'm all for. It's not gonna taste good, but you know you're gonna give it the tiniest lick just to see 😉