With a surprising announcement of Nintendo’s direct delivery direct Nintendo, Nintendo revealed a major change in how digital game purchases are handled. From now on, digital switch games will become virtual game cards that can be exchanged back and forth between consoles or borrowed by family members.
For players with multiple switch consoles, virtual game cards can be freely exchanged between systems. It requires local communication between the two systems, but this is my first time. An internet connection is required to “eject” or “load” a virtual game card, but not the other point of using the game.
Importantly, there is no limit to the number of accounts on the Switch that can use virtual game cards. In this way, it behaves like a physical game card – and unlike previous digital purchases that can be used by all accounts of the owner’s primary console, only the owner of the secondary console can be used. Additionally, you will need an internet connection to work with the secondary console.
To answer another important frustration of Nintendo Switch users’ families, virtual game cards can be rented out to other families whose accounts are grouped together. These loans last for 14 days, after which your virtual game card will be automatically returned to the owner. You can lend one game to each family at a time.
As a member of a family with multiple switch players, we can see that this is literally a life-changing update despite the restrictions Nintendo has placed on it. For years I have only purchased a physical Switch game for this very reason, and have not been able to share my digital library usefully. no longer!
Nintendo has not mentioned Switch 2 during the announcement of its virtual game cards. You will need to wait to see if the new console is compatible with the virtual game card system, but it appears that the new Switch 2 owners have been tuned to make it easier to manage their digital libraries with the old console and the new console.
