Nintendo

I used to buy physical as much as I could, but nowadays it doesn't mean anything, so I don't care as much about it.

Flash memory cartridges die, even faster in cases of bad batches. Optical discs have disc rot (again, some worse than others). Many many games have updates, DLCs or patches that won't be on the physical medium. Plenty of games coming on discs have to be fully installed on the machine's drive anyway because disc drives are too slow.

Most indie games, including some of the best experiences out there, never get physical versions, or only very limited ones.

The only way to preserve is to duplicate and archive everything, even if it's not easy. Keeping original physical media as a souvenir is nice, but it doesn't achieve long term preservation.

"Game-Key Cards" so it's a licensing dongle with a fancy name and peculiar shape.

I can see both side of the arguments.

Many games are releasing with just a code in a physical box, which among other issues means people can't resell those, with Game-key cards, at least people can resell these, and the next person can download the game too.

On the other hand, it is kind of officially sanctioning this practice of not releasing a full game on a cartridge, which can lead more companies to follow this example.

I guess it's upto end users now, to vote with their wallet and let the companies know that they won't buy these.

It kinda sucks how hard it is now to share a game with a friend. That was one of the main draws of console gaming for me; how you'd have ownership of the game to do with as you wished. PC gaming switched to predominately digital downloads years back, which is fine when you consider how affordable those games eventually become during Steam sales. But first party Nintendo games seem to hold their value and the sales are never that great, so you're left with more expensive games and no longer the option to share them.

I do wonder what console manufacturers will do in order to keep at least some all-physical releases around as game sizes grow. Blu Ray has topped out at 128GB on the highest end discs, and flash storage isn't dropping in price as quick as before for making larger cartridges. Maybe we will see more cases like Mario Kart World where the physical version is more expensive? However, I do think there might be less key card games as Switch 2 goes on, as likely a big motivation for key cards at launch is the current low production volume and high price of SD Express cards (which the cartridges are based on). Shelf space and shipping are a considerable cost to publishers, so they would have some motivation to avoid any costs related to the eShop hosting if possible.

Well, what little interest I had in buying as Switch 2 is now totally gone.