Topic: Square Enix has lost a customer until they support the switch 2 properly

@FishyS @Sunsy I think that was put there just to cover themselves before they knew much about digital purchases.

@Tasuki I could imagine them taking the wii download away eventually. Eventually there may only be 3 re-downloads a year or the one random person at Nintendo who keeps that system up and running may retire.

tbh, I bet the majority of redownloading currently is people testing to see if it is still possible rather than actually using it in a useful way. I did that 2 years ago purely to test.

@Tasuki I'm going to take a wait and see on it. IIRC, Nintendo even said Wii U and 3DS could be re-downloaded for the foreseeable future. At least with Wii and Wii U, I'd say get an extra SD card (Wii) or a hard drive (Wii U), and backup games to them and keep them in a safe spot. Just as a precaution.

Worst case scenario, download servers go offline, but at least the games will be backed up. Best case scenario, download servers stay online and people can re-download to their games.

I feel that the gigantic backlash against Jim Ryan trying to shut down the PS3/Vita stores back in 2021 extended the shelf life of being able to redownload purchased games in general considering Sony hasn’t attempted to shut it down again and it’s been 5 years since then.

Yea, it’s just not gonna happen for a long time when you’re talking about the console companies. Nobody wants to be the first to phase out a digital marketplace for an entire generation.

@FishyS lol btw I LITERALLY think about the bank thing several times a week. My great grandma was from the Great depression in the USA where people lost their money in the banks when banks lost everything. She would always hide cash in-between her towels and linen around her house. We're also pretty sure that she buried money in her yard that was never found. And yes I think you're misunderstanding. I'm positive the offline thing refers to something like GOG where you can download a DRN free game and a DRM free launcher that can be used offline and transferred between any hard drive or computer without restriction. Kind of like itunes. I own those mp3s and can drop them into other media players. As long as I have the files I have the music forever. With something like Switch, you cannot insert one microsd card between different switches even if you have a profile and registration on both Switches. You also cannot transfer your games to hard drive then transfer them back to an ad and put them in a switch. The offline refers to something like itunes (at least how it used to be, haven't bought anything from them in forever) or GOG.

@Dang_69
You can't just move an sd card back and forth between Switches? (I don't have digital games, I honestly don't know.)

The games on the SD cards are encrypted so you can't just make copies of the games and send them to everyone. Same reason why you're not allowed to make a copy of a cartridge. They could have tied the sd card encryption to accounts rather than devices but that would have required an enforced internet connection so would have had a different disadvantage.

@rallydefault The sd card is formatted to the individual Switch or Switch 2, having your profile on another doesn't matter, you'd have to reformat the card to use it on another Switch or Switch 2 (which you can do on the system).

@FishyS @Dang_69
So when you move an sd card to a different Switch, you have to reformat it? But you don't need to connect to the internet or anything to do that, right?

@rallydefault Nope, this is why a few years back I kept saying this is a form of DRM Nintendo uses. Someone kept trying to correct me saying I don't know the difference between DRM and formatting, but in this case being forced to format is a DRM scheme.

Nintendo does not want you to simply download a game to an SD card, and handing it off to someone else. By inserting an SD card into a different Switch forces (that's they keyword) you to format it, thus erasing games downloaded to it.

Normally, if an SD card is formatted for a device, you can move it from device to device without formatting it and still use your data. In Switch's case, you need to format it to prevent those games from moving to another system. Even if you happen to have two Switch systems.

@Sunsy
Wait, hang on - So if you take your sd card out from your Switch and it has like 20 games on it or something, and then you put that sd card into a new Switch... you need to reformat it AND redownload all the games?

@rallydefault Pretty much. It's done to prevent giving SD cards with those games on it to other people. Even if you already own the Switch, you have to redownload the games.

@Sunsy
Huh. Didn’t know that. But you can use virtual game cards to loan out digital games? Isn’t that a thing?

@rallydefault virtual game cards are easy to loan if you/ a family member have 2 switches with the same account but a pain otherwise; if the accounts are different you have to be in a registered family group with the other person and you can only lend each person 1 game for 14 days at a time.

Ease of lending is a massive drawback of digital even with virtual game cards.

TBH, I totally understand why Nintendo does this, because otherwise it would be an incredibly easy way to pirate Switch games. And since almost everyone has internet these days, redownloading them to a different console is not a big deal for the vast majority of Switch users.

@FishyS
Well... that was definitely a bunch of stuff I didn't know. Thank you!

If it's just two people sharing two consoles, you can easily just swap each other's cards back and forth, so that works quite well.

Any more than that and yes, it's a very limited feature.

@Matt_Barber It's weird that the virtual game card swap only works with 2 consoles. They already have to be physically near each other and have the same account logged in, so why not allow 3 if a family has 3 Switches in the same household? Let Switch B have one game and Switch C have a different game. It feels like a very odd restriction.

Wouldn't you just have a family account at that point? And in that case you can lend them the virtual game card