Japan’s National Diet Library (or ‘NDL’, for short) is one of the biggest libraries in the world and, from the year 2000, began to obtain video game CDs and cartridges for preservation purposes.
According to an article from Famitsu (thanks, Automaton), however, the library does not consider the Switch 2’s Game-Key Cards as ‘proper’ physical media and therefore will not be accepting them into its 9,600-strong catalogue of game titles.
It shouldn’t really come as a surprise when you consider what Game-Key Cards are. As discussed at length since the Switch 2’s reveal back in April, Game-Key Cards don’t hold any data beyond a license to download a game title from the eShop.
Not only does this present potential issues regarding storage and the near-mandatory need to purchase SD Express cards, but it’s also a huge risk to preservation efforts should the eShop ever suspend its functionality.
So yeah, no one’s going to preserve a piece of plastic that has no meaningful data on it, right? But to be super clear, the NDL stated the following:
“Since a key card, on its own, does not qualify as content, it falls outside of our scope for collection and preservation.”
Seems about as clear-cut as you can get. Nintendo has recently been attempting to gauge interest in Game-Key Cards via customer surveys, but at the time of writing has not made any moves to introduce more options for third-party publishers and customers alike.
Only a handful of third-party Switch 2 games have received a proper physical release, and according to a recent online listing, Yooka-Replaylee can potentially be counted amongst the elite few. An official announcement seems to be just around the corner, so we’ll be sure to provide an update as soon as we hear more.
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