Topic: Pokemon Pokopia

From the Amazon US Listing:

Games with Game-Key Card: This game uses a game-key card. Please make sure you have enough free space available on your Nintendo Switch 2 system or microSD Express card (sold separately) for the game to be downloaded.

Worth noting that the game is developed by Koei Tecmo and published by The Pokemon Company in Japan (Nintendo worldwide), so I don't think the GKC here indicates anything about future Nintendo-developed and published games.

@PikaPhantom
I don’t wanna call you a liar or anything, but I can’t see anything on Amazon. Haven’t tried Best Buy yet. Maybe it’s just the Amazon app?

@rallydefault It doesn't seem to show up when searching yet, but DekuDeals has a link that I was just able to get working.

@rallydefault

Here it is.

@PikaPhantom I had to google "Pokopia Switch 2" to even get anything.

Unless you plan on reselling the game, there's really no point in getting the GKC over a digital eShop purchase.

Yeah if I were to get it at some point it would be just as a regular download.

GKC as a format seems like a combination of the worst of both worlds. But I have no issues with download-only titles.

I'm leaning toward not buying it right now because there's no excuse for the game not releasing on a real cartridge, but I may end up being tempted depending on how the final product turns out.

@ElRoberico @PikaPhantom
Thank you!

Yea, bummer. I was on the fence, but I’ll be sitting it out now.

@rallydefault I'm glad it at least seems like the filesize will be 10 GB, since it's easier to accept a digital download when it's a smaller filesize. Regardless, I'm not buying a Game-Key Card version of Pokopia, and it being for a first-party exclusive is more of a turnoff for buying it digitally than it is for other games because there's no good excuse. At least third parties are pricing their games below $70 and have to deal with paying around $16 per cartridge, with retailers and Nintendo also receiving cuts

Gosh, it looks really fun and cute...

Yeah I'm gonna have to get that, it looks like a lot of chill fun.

Game really does look fun, but since I've once again become unsure of whether I'm getting a Switch 2 or not, I may have to end up passing on this one.

The announcement that it was a Game Key Card really did kill a lot of my hype 😢

@Nep-Nep-Freak
It's a bummer because it does actually seem fun to me, but I refuse to support the game key card stuff. One day it will become inevitable, but I don't think we're there yet.

@rallydefault Why not buy it digital then?

I really don't understand why people are more angry with GKC than digital-only. It makes no sense to me. The GKC is a resellable, tradeable, shareable digital key. It has its own upsides over digital only, that might be downsides to others, but not exclusively so.

@OmnitronVariant
It's not about the resell ability.
It's about ownership.
Purchasing an empty cartridge without any game data inside and must download the game from eshop while still available is a scam in my opinion.
I"m games collector so I don't want game key card, partial download games, code in box games, streaming only games.
I want legit physical games with game data inside the cartridge / disc.
I don't care convenience, if convenience killing physical media, I would rather refuse the convenience.

@Anti-Matter It's not more of a scam than digital only, though. And my comment was about GKC vs digital only.

Digital vs physical is another topic, but given the fact that practically every game these days gets day 1 patches post release, I don't see much value in physical anymore personally. I wish it wasn't like that, but it simply is. Most of my physical PS4 games required updates to even launch. While it's not as bad on Switch, many games release in degraded form compared to the post-release patches.

Because of that reality (and not the potential of a perfect physical release), I personally don't see the value in physical anymore. I also don't buy GKC's because I don't care about reselling games anymore (you get a pittance back, if that), and so I tend to go digital for ease of use and because the benefits of physical are moot to me given the reality explained above.

On the topic of Pokopia though, this is a game that particularly lends itself to a digital only release, because it's likely to receive a lot of updates over time. It's that "type" of game, like it or not.

@Suketoudara @OmnitronVariant
I only buy physical games, so I guess you could say I'm equally "angry" (though that's a pretty harsh word for a hobby) with GKC and digital-only games.

I like to own my games.

And the "every game gets a patch these days" argument doesn't work: you just don't download the patch. I have hundreds of games for Switch/Switch 2, and only a handful have patches that you are absolutely required to download, and those are usually online games like Mario Kart or a very small few that are correcting game-breaking bugs that the dev deemed the patch necessary.

I've played probably a dozen games on my Switch 2 so far, and the only one that I've HAD to download a patch for MK is World, and even then I only had to because I wanted to keep playing online.

I think it's just how some people feel emotionally rather than anything particularly concrete. From my perspective, physical media means 2 things - you can resell and you have a pretty box to shelve, both of which exist in game key cards. I suppose technically there is an edge case where the apocalypse happens and we have no Internet but we can use our hand electrical generators to run our Switch 2s and plug in some brand new purely physical games we looted from a burning gamestop and have them run because they aren't GKC.

Sorry, this is getting very off topic. 😅 Personally I'm planning to buy Pokopia digitally if it turns out to be a good game... although $70 is a bit much for a spinoff so I may wait for a sale.