Nintendo Has “No Plans” To Use Game-Key Cards For First-Party-Developed Titles

You can push any fears about seeing Mario on a Game-Key Card aside, as Nintendo has revealed to us that it has “no plans” to use the new physical format on its first-party-developed titles.

After more Switch 2 titles began to crop up under the Game-Key Card label, we reached out to Nintendo UK for confirmation about whether we should expect to see the same approach used on Mario, Link and Samus’ future endeavours. Today, we received the following response:

We currently have no plans to use game-key cards for Nintendo-developed titles

Now yes, the answer does specifically use the wording “Nintendo-developed titles” there, so there’s every chance that games published by the Big N might be subject to a key card release down the line. But your major entries in the core series will be complete on cart for the time being, it seems.

This official word echoes Doug Bowser’s sentiment in his statement on the purpose of Switch 2’s new physical option. “Physical games are still a key part of our business,” the NOA president told IGN in a recent interview, while Game-Key Cards are “a way that our publishing partners are able to bring more content onto the platform, deeper and larger, more immersive content on the platform”.

The “publishing partners” specification in the above quote had us pretty confident that first-party releases would be off the Key Card table, but it’s nice to have official confirmation, all the same.