When I picked up my pre-ordered Switch 2, I was unsure if my copy of Mario Kart World would be digital or physical one. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one confused. However, when I opened the system I found neither a cartridge or a traditional download code. Instead, it was Nintendo’s new Virtual Game Card, and it’s one of Nintendo’s strangest moves yet.
To be fair, doing things in a quirky way that goes against all sense is Nintendo’s entire brand. As someone who has owned both a Power Pad and a Virtual Boy, trust me on that. Sometimes it works brilliantly (the Wii), sometimes it’s a dismal failure (the Power Glove), and sometimes it just takes the public awhile to get used to it (The Wii U evolving into the Switch). Mario has always had more audacity than he does gold coins, so you can’t really get mad at Nintendo for being Nintendo.
The Virtual Game Cards are weird, though. Instead of conventional downloads, players have to move digital representations of their Switch’s library around as if they were physical cartridges. To play a game, you “load” a cartridge, which triggers a download. You can then eject a cartridge to free up space, which is functionally just deleting a download with extra steps. The whole thing turns makes buying a game from the eShop needlessly complicated.
There are some benefits to the Virtual Game Cards that make sense if you realize what Nintendo is trying to do. Unlike most other home consoles, Switches (and presumably Switch 2s in the future) are more likely to be bought in multiples for a single household. Nintendo itself says that around 20 percent of console sales in 2021 went to households that already had a console. That was coming off the COVID-19 pandemic when I’m sure a lot of people wanted to make sure cooped up families didn’t have to share as they hid from the apocalypse.
Me? I already had a regular Switch and a Switch Lite. The former was my work Switch and the one my child played, and the latter belonged to my wife. A consistent problem for us was sharing games. Physical copies are often out of stock and rarely go on sale the way digital ones do. That led to multiple purchases on both systems for a few games such as Portion Permit or Cat Quest. It was usually cheaper indie games, but still got annoying.
The Virtual Game Card System lets players lend games between systems as long as they’re on a family account together and connected by wireless internet. The lending period is two weeks, but you can always lend it again. The lender loses access to the game until it’s returned. If you have a gamer household, it can be nice to just swap games you’ve finished that someone else is interested it.
However, it’s still not a good system. For one, it feels like yet another attempt to do away with physical media. Game publishers have spent years trying to move games into a digital-only medium as a way to eliminate the used game industry that they don’t directly profit from. Also, digital media remains controlled by the seller, who can literally remove titles you’ve bought from your library. The entire game industry is slowly trying to end the practice of people owning their games to do whatever they want with them, and the Virtual Game Card looks like the latest candy coat on a bitter pill.
For another, the Virtual Game Card system is still too restrictive. If I own a game, I should be allowed to loan it for however long I want and retrieve it at my discretion. My brother asked to borrow the Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy last year. That’s about 400 hours of play if you include the DLC, and he’s nowhere near done with it. Even if we did just shuffle this back and forth over several two week periods, I couldn’t loan him a Virtual Game Card anyway as the system only works for two Switches in the same household, not my brother who lives out past Atascocita.
I applaud Nintendo for at least trying to address the greed-based limitations of downloaded games, but it’s still so terrified that someone somewhere will get to enjoy a game without paying full retail price that it’s barely usable. It’s a good first step, but more needs to happen. Here are five ways to make the Virtual Game Card work like the system should.
Loaning a Virtual Game Card should not have a time limit. A notification reminding you every couple of weeks that you have a loan out and asking if you would like to return it would be sufficient.
You should have a wider trusted network you can loan, too. Asking for unlimited movement of Virtual Game Cards is probably a non-starter, but being able to connect to five accounts seems reasonable. A lot of people are probably thinking about re-gifting their original Switches right now, and it would be nice if you could also loan that person a few games to get started.
A re-sell option would be even better. Nintendo is already handing out credit for every online purchase that consistently knocks a buck or two off new games you buy. As long as we’re moving Virtual Game Cards between systems, why can’t I permanently gift them as well? Let’s say my brother asks if he can keep Xenoblade Chronicles 1-3 (if you’re reading this, Matt, over my dead body. Love you). I agree to sell him the games for $20 each. He puts $60 worth of credit into his Nintendo account, he transfers that to my seller account, and my loan becomes a permanent sell that removes it from my library.
We’ve long needed a gifting system in home consoles. It’s wild that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have built gaming social networks that don’t allow direct gifting. Make it possible for people to share their wishlists with others and for them to buy Virtual Game Cards. It needs to be easy enough that your grandma who doesn’t game can use it as simply as an Amazon purchase, and also to have it timed for specific dates. The ability to include a little note would be even better.
Lastly, this does nothing to help people who want to play co-opt. Since the Virtual Game Card only allows the game to exist on one console at a time, there’s no way to play simultaneously. Is it really too much to ask for that the loaner mechanic also allow temporary downloads across two systems so that someone can play a few rounds of Mortal Kombat 1 together? If there’s a way to limit a loan to two weeks, there has to be a way to enable two copies for one hour.
Do all this, and the Virtual Game Card might actually be one of those revolutionary steps forward that Nintendo is famous for instead of an overcomplicated online store crippled by piracy anxiety that fails to embrace the shared nature of play.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
