Topic: If I lose a physical game for the Nintendo Switch, can I buy the digital copy for free?

@FishyS Problem here is the games are getting bigger and not everyone finish a game as well so this is the part being missed. One can only archive so much and a Physical cart not those requiring one game and three Digital isn't efficient use of sd memory space. What is missed is Digital is tied to the account that purchased the game that is the biggest con to owning Digital games. Sure redownload but only the purchased account no other. Physical you aren't tied down to the Digital account unless one has DLC for the game.

@SwitchForce I agree being able to sell and share a physical game is a huge pro of physical games. I just meant there is no real reason to swap SD cards. I have 350 games on my SD card right now and if I ever did need more, redownloading is easy. I doubt even Switch 2 will have many truly enormous games so 1 TB should be plenty for another console generation.

Note also that Nintendo stores your save state so redownloading won't lose anything. You could have Nintendo save progress for 100TB of games and redownload as needed if you really wanted to play 4,000 at once.

Only downside if you want your data backup one has to buy NSO subscription to have up to date backup of games with some expectations ACNH is biggest one. Digital once bought you have access as long as your account is in good grace with them. Archive is good but you will have to redownload to play and remove others to re-play games again. And as it does get bigger it becomes a headache managing them as for Physical to just pop it in and update or wait and just play right away. That part of Nintendo saves not one's console save is a paid Save game data that's not a free service.