Nintendo Unveils Digital Game Sharing

Nintendo has announced plans to introduce Virtual Game Cards for its Switch console in late April, allowing users to share digital games across multiple systems, the Japanese gaming company said during its Nintendo Direct event. The new feature will enable players to virtually load and eject digital games between Nintendo Switch consoles, mimicking the flexibility of physical game cartridges.

Users can play a single digital title on up to two systems, requiring only a one-time local connection between devices. The company has also confirmed that Virtual Game Cards will be compatible with both current and next-generation hardware. The system will also feature a family sharing option, allowing users to lend digital games to family members for two-week periods before automatically returning to the owner's account.

It's a trap.

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

You should not share Nintendo games. There's a high probably you'll be sued.

Re:

[Rinnon]

Not sure I understand. Steam already does something very similar (but better) with family library sharing. Connect two (or more) accounts to a single family, and everyone can use any of the games that anyone owns, as long as no one else is using it at that time (and as long as the publisher doesn't opt out for a particular game [or maybe they have to opt in? I'm not actually sure; but most non-brand-new game work]). I considered this a decent move from Nintendo that I wasn't expecting from them, given their

Re:

[Volanin]

It was a sarcastic joke (a pretty good one, if you ask me). At this point, it's basically a meme that Nintendo sues anyone who so much as thinks about using their IP without handing over the money. So yeah, even if you legally and officially share the game between your own two Switches, they'll probably still come for you.

Re:

[Can'tNot]

Yes, a meme with about as much validity as "France surrenders!"

It was a bunch of streamers getting their knickers in a bunch because Nintendo did not agree that adding some snide comments on top of video game footage constitutes an original work. Then, once the streamers had put out the notion that Nintendo was overly litigious people looked at pretty normal lawsuits against ROM sites and the like and saw those as confirmation.

I don't like being put in the position of defending Nintendo, and so often,

Re: It's a trap.

[PoopMelon]

Nintendo's hate bandwagon is absolutely deserved. The atrocity of copyright abusers they are makes me want to pirate every single thing they make, even though i don't play any of it

Good but not best

[JeffSh]

I'm glad they are doing something. I had thought long about how poor the game sharing is for the Switch 1 platform and how important it is for Switch 2 to make purchasing digital games more flexible use like owning a physical copy. This is a huge improvement but it still seems overly complicated. I'll have to wait to see what it is like I guess, because I'd really like to use the convenience of digital licenses, but with the Nintendo platform I can't abandon the flexibility of physical game cards yet.

Don't worry

[DrXym]

I'm sure people will develop other ways to share games

Press releases like this...

[MpVpRb]

...imagine a scenario where the tech works perfectly
In the real world, it will work as advertised some of the time, occasionally fail with mysterious errors, and be enormously maddening and frustrating
Legitimate users will get angry
Pirates will find weaknesses, loopholes and workarounds
Actually making this tech work perfectly, in all edge cases, with users who make stupid mistakes, is hard, really hard. They will probably release a low-effort version that demands perfection in user behavior and has no error

So this is for your kids

[rsilvergun]

If you've got two kids you might end up buying each of them a Nintendo switch. That means you probably want physical cartridges whenever possible right now so that they can swap cartridges between them. That's the problem this is meant to solve.

The occasional error or problem will be irritating but given how many games just aren't available in a physical format I guess it's better to have some solution than nothing. And honestly Nintendo's software usually just works.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Then again, they worked with Microsoft.

You have to realize Microsoft was working on this very thing since 2007 when it was soundly rejected by gamers when the Xbox One was being introduced.

So I expect in the years since Microsoft probably has refined the technology and gave it to Nintendo to do, because traditionally Nintendo had very poor online offerings, and it seems only after collaborating with Microsoft did their online things improve substantially.

Nintendo, CIC Chip Implmenter Claims Fairness

[BrendaEM]

Is Nintendo trying to claw itself out of draconian reputation well they dug for themselves?

Selling?

[GrahamJ]

Does this apply to selling games too? If not I’ll stick to carts.

Anything new here?

[TheWho79]

This sounds exactly like the current nonsense system. We have 4 switches in the house, and it kills me that we have basically been forced to buy 4 copies of each game.

Re:

[Can'tNot]

The only reason you would need four copies of each game right now is if you wanted to play it on all four consoles simultaneously. It doesn't look like this will change anything in that regard.

... Or I guess you could be in that situation if you bought DRM'd downloads instead of buying cartridges. If that's the case then stop doing that and your problems are solved.

Re:

[codebase7]

The only reason you would need four copies of each game right now

Is because of the Ticket metadata format [switchbrew.org] that Nintendo uses for digital purchases. That data contains not just the eshop account ID that bought it, but also the specific serial number of the console it was made for. Both of which are checked and enforced by the OS's signature verification.

I.e. With the current system, it's not possible to share games because the metadata wouldn't match the console the game was shared to, and changing it would require Nintendo to generate a brand new ticket. (Which it onl