[UPDATE - February 19, 2026] Square Enix's Naoki Hamaguchi, Game Director on the Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy, has expressed the same concept: Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Cards are much faster than regular cartridges, making them practically mandatory for certain games.
[ORIGINAL STORY] Releasing Nintendo Switch 2 games on Game-Key Cards may be a forced choice for some developers due to traditional cartridges' technical limitations.
Speaking on Bluesky, Ubisoft Snowdrop Engine audio architect Rob Bantin provided some interesting insight on why a developer may choose to release a game on a Game Key Card, revealing that the Switch 2 cartridges didn't give the performance needed at the quality target they were going for in the Star Wars Outlaws. The game is powered by the Snowdrop engine, which heavily relies on disk streaming for its open-world environments.
While this is a critical limitation, it shouldn't impact every Nintendo Switch 2 game moving forward. In a second message, the Snowdrop engine developer said that if a game is designed from the ground up for the system, the carts' performance limitations may not force a Game-Key card release, but as Star Wars Outlaws was built around the SSDs of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, there was no choice but to release the game in Game-Key card format.
Judging from the Star Wars Outlaws footage released online so far, it seems like Ubisoft definitely made the right call, as even with some noticeable visual downgrades over the other versions of the game, the Nintendo Switch 2 port of the game is really solid, keeping a steady 30 FPS framerate even in open-world areas while also featuring ray-traced effects. Now that the console is out and its specs widely known, hopefully more developers will be able to work around some of the cartridges' technical limitations and release more proper retail releases, which Nintendo Switch 2 owners seem to love, looking at sales data of games like Cyberpunk 2077
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
