TL;DR: R-Type Dimensions III is switching from a Game Key Card release to having the full game on the card. Because of this, the physical release MSRP is increasing by €10. They will honor the old price for existing pre-orders.
Initially, the publisher said that this was made possible by the new smaller capacity cartridges that Nintendo just announced. Later, they updated the press release to remove any references to cheaper cartridges and instead said that Nintendo did not announce anything.
Key cards are so fucking stupid. You dont get the convenience of digital or the ability to play the cart offline. Its like the worst of both worlds.
They are at least resellable, which would not be true of pure digital. One could also argue that even regular media don’t always contain all the content needed to run the game (require a download to start it), and are not fit for archival purposes. I agree with other points. To me it’s especially stupid that you have to pay for your storage, and microSD express cards are not cheap (and games are getting pretty big, which is not weird).
They could just have made their digital sales resellable and done without the key cards entirely. But of course they won’t, because why would you accommodate your customers eh?
If they don’t have to, they won’t. It’s not like their competitors are any better.
The exact opposite to GOG !
So the only way they make sense is if they replace the simple code some collectors edition have, since you can’t then sell the physical game that you bought.
For all other cases, it’s a downgrade.
I wasn’t aware they were doing this one but I have the other Switch R Type Dimensions (with 1 and 2)… It’s about 200MB. Which is not surprising since it’s just the original 2D games with sprites replaced with (decent, but still relatively simple) 3D models.
If the smallest cards on Switch 2 are so much more expensive that those useless key cards, it’s ridiculous.
I don’t want them for any game, but for a small game like that, key cards are even worse than usual. What’s even the point of going for a fake physical release for a retro game like this?
I don’t even understand why the key card can’t hold such a game physically. The TurboGrafix 16 used cards. And they weren’t just codes to download the game; the card actually stored data.
I just checked, and if the wikipedia page on switch 2 cards is correct, there are only two types of switch 2 cartridges.
Key cards are not meant to have anything on them but the key.
Standard cards are 64GB and thus expensive. All of them.
This is terrible. Still, never buying a key card.
I do get that 64GB cards are much more expensive than key cards. I don’t get why they don’t offer other sizes.
“Inin Games later updated its official blog to remove any reference to the “new smaller cartridge sizes” it previously said Nintendo had “announced.” The publisher also backtracked in a social media update, clarifying that “there has been no official announcement or confirmation from Nintendo concerning cartridge storage capacities.””
Oops. This is great news for the physical game collectors. I gave up back in 2020 and have been mostly digital unless its a steal to get a physical version, but I always thought it was awful that it was a dying medium. I miss the instruction books and extras from long ago. On a side note there are a few companies doing custom books for some games which is really cool.
Tbh, I do get why they do instruction booklets and stuff only for collectors editions.
Back in the 90s and before that instruction booklets were actually vitally important. Games just didn’t have the storage size to cram decent tutorials, backstory and artwork into the game itself. The booklets taught you how to play the game and gave you nice images to visualize what the 16 pixels that made up your character were supposed to symbolize.
All that isn’t necessary anymore. In-game tutorials and resources are much better than what you could pack into a booklet (and can be updated, which isn’t possible with the booklet), and hardware advances mean that the games look exactly how they are supposed to look. Artwork in the booklet wouldn’t look any better.
But some people love that kind of stuff, so it makes sense to sell it only to them and save the money and material that would just go into the bin for most buyers.
