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Nintendo to start adding a digital discount / physical premium to new first party Switch 2 games (arstechnica.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/nintendo@lemmy.world
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Yoshi and the Mysterious Book will sell for $60 in the eShop and will have an MSRP of $70 for the physical cartridge.

An opmist would say that it is $70 game and they are adding a $10 discount for buying it digitally. A pessimist would say that it is a $60 game and there is a $10 fee for the plastic cartridge.

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[–] 15 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I think your example already makes a case for it - your cart still contains 1.0. You couldn't get that any more, if digital were the only option. It's a beautiful thing, to have media that does not depend on the Internet, that no company has control of (unless they want to physically send someone to your house to confiscate it).

To me, that stability is so much more valuable than any add-on content. It works both ways, so there's tradeoffs, ie the latest updates are often not available on physical.

But yeah, I'm with you on most of it phasing out and us being dinosaurs.

I don't like digital, but I'm already old and would be fine if no new video games were released (physical or otherwise) starting today. I enjoy the paradigm of games I grew up with, and since it's voluntary, for-fun entertainment, I don't always have to adapt.

Personally, I think as consoles shift more digital, I'll shift more to PC.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago*

    Nintendo can already brick your cartridge over the internet and make it require game updates (via system firmware updates). They have already done this with Super Mario Wonder on Switch 2 - the game will not run without an update download. You can't revert firmware versions on a DRM box like the Switch, and new cartridges (even ones with "the full game" on them) will require and include firmware updates. Playing the console online or purchasing any digital-only content (or downloading free patches) also requires the latest firmware, and there are whitelist mechanisms in place for Nintendo to outright say "you cannot run v1.0 of game X on system version 16.7.2U". The v1. 0 being on a cartridge has no bearing on this functionality.

    The only way to "play video games without relying on the internet or a company's server" legally while being 100% sure that the company can't do what they did to Mario Wonder is to buy and maintain multiple outdated firmware consoles that are isolated completely from the Internet. That's obviously infeasible, so the only way to "play video games without relying on the internet or a company's server" is the complete defeat or removal of DRM. On Nintendo platforms, that means piracy, full stop. On PC, there are a ton of games that are DRM-free digitally distributed products - those are the endgame here, not chips or discs. After all, with no DRM, you can put your copy of Slay the Spire on as many flash drives or DVDs as you want!

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    There's also storage costs.

    In a world where games can easily be dozens of GB and storage is at a premium (thanks, AI companies) having physical media with most of the game data on it makes it a lot easier to juggle between games.

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