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After seeing what a nightmare it was moving my copy of Mario Kart 8 to my wife's Switch, I don't buy digital console games anymore. There's still a delay every

by causi 3y ago

After seeing what a nightmare it was moving my copy of Mario Kart 8 to my wife's Switch, I don't buy digital console games anymore. There's still a delay every time the title is launched as Nintendo "checks to see if this game is playable". Meanwhile I can put the cartridge in and go on whatever console or account.

cle 3y ago
I was doing the same thing, and then I lost my bag of cartridges.
randunel 3y ago
By purchasing that game, you signaled to Nintendo that their practise is OK, making it worse for all of us. I went legal with Steam, but stopped when microtransaction galore got adopted everywhere, on top of DRM. Arrgh matey!
gjsman-1000 3y ago
I tell friends that digital is great if you have only young children or live in a neighborhood with occasional break-ins - otherwise, it has almost no redeeming qualities. Daughter got a great game for Christmas? She can’t share it with siblings, or friends in real life, or friends from another state (why not mail game cards once in a while?). Kind of a huge shame really if it was a single-player game with a finite beginning and end. It’s dumber though for collecting too. As a collector, if you buy used… the games you bought for $35-40 will probably sell for at least $30-35 (if they are Nintendo). They might even explode like the GameCube or 3DS. And with 70%~80% of Switch purchases being digital, there’s going to be a real physical media shortage when the eShop goes down. (At a minimum though, if they keep even 75% of their value over a 5-year period after you bought them for $38 or so used, you could spend $1000 on Switch games, have it still be worth $750, and have paid about $50/yr to have a ludicrous catalog. Can’t think that way with digital.) Which, that’s just great too. Digital is not very resilient to any kind of cyberwarfare, or AWS having a bad day. Just when you need it most, it’s gone. I rate our odds of keeping electricity available as being much higher than computers and digital equipment. Edit: And while I keep adding reasons; remember that physical means you have the ability to always play the game version physically on the card. (If you update the game after inserting the card, you do need to factory-reset your Switch to go back to that older version for various reasons, but you can still get to it.) This matters quite a bit if a game becomes more bloated and slow over time (Minecraft), or if the game had useful duplication bugs that were patched (Zelda: TOTK). Digital downloads? You're stuck with whatever update they give you.
JeffeFawkes 3y ago
Counterpoint - you can play the digital copy of Mario Kart twice at the same time. The first Switch (or whatever you designate as the "main" Switch for your account) can launch the game regardless of online status, while the second has to check every time - annoying, but not unheard of (PS4/5 does something similar). You can run the game on both Switches at once, with one license - something you can't do with physical. But it's a massive trade-off since no online or store shutdown means you're stuck, whereas a cart should work forever.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > whereas a cart should work forever. Potentially true, but less and less so these days. I have a couple of physical games that are unplayable without a day one patch. The cartridge doesn't have everything it needs to play the game. Once the servers stop hosting the content and I swap consoles, I won't be able to play the game. Chances are, it'll outlive my interest in the game so it's whatever to me personally, but I do get that for some people who play older games it means that game will eventually become officially unplayable.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    It's not a perfect system, but I think the Nintendo Switch is the best system for collectors right now. There are still many things I would change, but compared to Xbox and PlayStation... 1. Games that require downloads are clearly labelled on the box. (Spyro being an example - clearly states that a ~10GB download is required on the back.) 2. Games that only include download codes are required to have a massive banner at the top of the box. There's also no "Smart Delivery" nonsense like on Xbox where the game might have a Xbox One version but no Xbox Series version on the disc. 3. Games can be updated offline from another Nintendo Switch. While not a perfect system (no upgrading directly from stored files), if Person A's Pokemon Scarlet has been updated to 1.4, and your version is 1.0; if the internet was not available, Person A could update you to 1.4; and then you could update other people to 1.4. Compare that to a PlayStation or Xbox which has no capacity for offline updating of games, of any kind. The catch though is that the Nintendo Switch System Software (OS) has no ability for offline updates unlike the PlayStation or Xbox, so keeping your Nintendo Switch System up-to-date is still important. 4. Nintendo occasionally revises cartridges to have newer versions of games, quietly. Super Mario Maker 2, for example, has had 5 cartridge revisions going from version 1.0 to 3.0.1. Breath of the Wild has had 4 revisions from 1.0 to 1.6. Third-party studios don't do this that often, unfortunately, but you can read the revisions list at http://www.benoitren.be/switch-cartridgerevisions.html http://www.benoitren.be/switch-cartridgerevisions.html.

by causi 3y ago

cle 3y ago

I was doing the same thing, and then I lost my bag of cartridges.

randunel 3y ago

By purchasing that game, you signaled to Nintendo that their practise is OK, making it worse for all of us. I went legal with Steam, but stopped when microtransaction galore got adopted everywhere, on top of DRM. Arrgh matey!

gjsman-1000 3y ago

I tell friends that digital is great if you have only young children or live in a neighborhood with occasional break-ins - otherwise, it has almost no redeeming qualities. Daughter got a great game for Christmas? She can’t share it with siblings, or friends in real life, or friends from another state (why not mail game cards once in a while?). Kind of a huge shame really if it was a single-player game with a finite beginning and end. It’s dumber though for collecting too. As a collector, if you buy used… the games you bought for $35-40 will probably sell for at least $30-35 (if they are Nintendo). They might even explode like the GameCube or 3DS. And with 70%~80% of Switch purchases being digital, there’s going to be a real physical media shortage when the eShop goes down. (At a minimum though, if they keep even 75% of their value over a 5-year period after you bought them for $38 or so used, you could spend $1000 on Switch games, have it still be worth $750, and have paid about $50/yr to have a ludicrous catalog. Can’t think that way with digital.) Which, that’s just great too. Digital is not very resilient to any kind of cyberwarfare, or AWS having a bad day. Just when you need it most, it’s gone. I rate our odds of keeping electricity available as being much higher than computers and digital equipment. Edit: And while I keep adding reasons; remember that physical means you have the ability to always play the game version physically on the card. (If you update the game after inserting the card, you do need to factory-reset your Switch to go back to that older version for various reasons, but you can still get to it.) This matters quite a bit if a game becomes more bloated and slow over time (Minecraft), or if the game had useful duplication bugs that were patched (Zelda: TOTK). Digital downloads? You're stuck with whatever update they give you.

JeffeFawkes 3y ago

Counterpoint - you can play the digital copy of Mario Kart twice at the same time. The first Switch (or whatever you designate as the "main" Switch for your account) can launch the game regardless of online status, while the second has to check every time - annoying, but not unheard of (PS4/5 does something similar). You can run the game on both Switches at once, with one license - something you can't do with physical. But it's a massive trade-off since no online or store shutdown means you're stuck, whereas a cart should work forever.

vel0city 3y ago
> whereas a cart should work forever. Potentially true, but less and less so these days. I have a couple of physical games that are unplayable without a day one patch. The cartridge doesn't have everything it needs to play the game. Once the servers stop hosting the content and I swap consoles, I won't be able to play the game. Chances are, it'll outlive my interest in the game so it's whatever to me personally, but I do get that for some people who play older games it means that game will eventually become officially unplayable.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  It's not a perfect system, but I think the Nintendo Switch is the best system for collectors right now. There are still many things I would change, but compared to Xbox and PlayStation... 1. Games that require downloads are clearly labelled on the box. (Spyro being an example - clearly states that a ~10GB download is required on the back.) 2. Games that only include download codes are required to have a massive banner at the top of the box. There's also no "Smart Delivery" nonsense like on Xbox where the game might have a Xbox One version but no Xbox Series version on the disc. 3. Games can be updated offline from another Nintendo Switch. While not a perfect system (no upgrading directly from stored files), if Person A's Pokemon Scarlet has been updated to 1.4, and your version is 1.0; if the internet was not available, Person A could update you to 1.4; and then you could update other people to 1.4. Compare that to a PlayStation or Xbox which has no capacity for offline updating of games, of any kind. The catch though is that the Nintendo Switch System Software (OS) has no ability for offline updates unlike the PlayStation or Xbox, so keeping your Nintendo Switch System up-to-date is still important. 4. Nintendo occasionally revises cartridges to have newer versions of games, quietly. Super Mario Maker 2, for example, has had 5 cartridge revisions going from version 1.0 to 3.0.1. Breath of the Wild has had 4 revisions from 1.0 to 1.6. Third-party studios don't do this that often, unfortunately, but you can read the revisions list at http://www.benoitren.be/switch-cartridgerevisions.html http://www.benoitren.be/switch-cartridgerevisions.html.