Although often criticized by gamers and fans of physical media, Switch 2 game cards allow certain devs to bring their games to Nintendo’s latest console.
At least, that’s what Naoki Hamaguchi, director of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, claims. According to him, the first installment would not have been possible on Switch 2 without this format. He also stated that Square Enix had previously had to abandon plans to release some of its games on Switch 1 due to the machine’s lack of power and storage media.
“There’s simply no way around key cards in certain respects. If you compare loading directly from a game cartridge (containing all game data) to loading from the Nintendo Switch 2’s internal storage, the load speed difference is roughly double.
Some have expressed concern that multiplatform development may impose constraints not only on graphics, but even on game design itself. However, this is precisely why we didn’t choose a cartridge.
Our game design isn’t built around loading all data upfront, with nothing further being loaded afterward. Even during gameplay, data is constantly swapped in and out, and given that premise, the loading speed from a game card would inevitably be insufficient, leading to stress for the player. In addition, with currently available cartridge capacity, there is the practical limitation that the full game data simply wouldn’t fit in the first place.
[…] In the past, when faced with practical issues related to load speed and storage capacity we couldn’t resolve, we had to decide not to release on Nintendo systems. However, Nintendo Switch 2’s performance is impressive, and with a key card format like FFVII Remake, releasing the games became possible. I believe the only thing I can do is continue to sincerely communicate that fact to users.
[…] I have absolutely no intention of demanding that all gamers accept key cards. I would simply be happy if people could understand that there are games that can only be released because the key card format made it possible.”
