If you missed the news, Nintendo hosted a Switch 1-themed Direct yesterday to make way ahead of the coming Switch 2 deep-dive in April. No matter. We covered five of the biggest announcements during the roughly 30 minutes of footage shown off, failing to mention the best announcement of the night: Virtual Game Cards.
We’ve all been there. Your sibling begs to borrow Super Mario Odyssey or something similar, but there’s just no way you’re letting them lay their grubby paws on your Switch OLED, where the game exists digitally. Virtual Game Cards changes all that. Like physical cartridges, players can now ‘lend’ their digital games to anyone. Within reason, obviously.
Nintendo’s innovating again
Going forward, digital games will automatically become ‘Virtual Game Cards’ and act just like your current digital library. But there’s one difference. Virtual Game Cards can be loaned out to a friend or family member for up to fourteen days at a time, disabling the owner’s access to the game during that period. That might seem counterintuitive, but Nintendo is aiming to recreate the feeling of lending a physical Switch cartridge.
It’s an excellent idea for close-knit groups of friends and particularly family members. Players could previously share their games with family members by signing into their Nintendo accounts on a separate system and vice-versa, but this method introduced certain hassles and required a constant internet connection to play a ‘borrowed’ game. Virtual Game Cards ditches the hassle. Kinda.
Read More: Five of the biggest announcements from the Switch 1 Nintendo Direct
There are a couple of hoops you’ll need to jump through before you can become the loanshark of your friend or family group. First, games can only be shared between those accounts within your ‘Family Group’ (though there’s nothing stopping you from adding a friend to that group). Once in, a game’s owner can lend that game out for up to fourteen days at a time. Both Switch consoles require an internet connection when loaning out a game.
Nintendo made no mention of the Switch 2 during its most recent Direct, but did briefly mention that Virtual Game Cards would penetrate the next-gen console in a blog post. One theory suggests that Nintendo could be cooking up a cartridge-less Switch 2 Pro or OLED model, and that Virtual Game Cards were designed to accommodate those users.
