Nintendo’s new Switch 2 Game Cards have been a popular choice for publishers, especially with their data-free, download-unlocking approach. However, a developer on Star Wars Outlaws recently revealed that the physical Game Card interface posed serious technical limitations, making a full physical release impractical.
Speaking on a Bluesky thread, Rob Bantin, Snowdrop Audio Architect for the game, explained that their engine heavily relies on disk streaming for open-world environments. He wrote, “Snowdrop relies heavily on disk streaming for its open world environments, and we found the Switch 2 cards simply didn’t give the performance we needed at the quality target we were going for. I think if we’d designed a game for Switch 2 from the ground up it might have been different.”
The issue stems from the eMMC-based Game Cards, which reportedly max out at 400 MB/s. While this is an improvement over original Switch cards (around 90 MB/s), it still lags behind the Switch 2’s internal SSD (2,100 MB/s) and MicroSD Express expansion cards (up to 800 MB/s or more). For a game like Star Wars Outlaws, which was initially developed for high-speed SSDs on consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, the relatively slow data transfer from Game Cards could compromise asset streaming and overall performance.
Bantin emphasized that the development team opted for digital and Game Key Card releases rather than squeezing the game onto slower physical media, noting that the decision was about maintaining quality rather than manufacturing cost. “I don’t recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion, probably because it was moot,” he wrote.
This is not the first time developers have highlighted Game Card limitations on the Switch 2. CD Projekt Red VP of Technology, Charles Tremblay, mentioned similar challenges when porting Cyberpunk 2077. He noted that while MicroSD Express cards were “great” for streaming, physical Game Cards were “merely okay” in comparison, though the overall input/output performance of the console was still impressive compared to older hardware.
The difference in data transfer speeds also explains why games like Mario Kart World may experience longer loading screens when run from a physical card versus internal storage. While Nintendo could implement Game Card pre-installation to internal storage, as Sony and Microsoft do with optical disc titles, this could leave players who don’t have high capacity MicroSD cards or are running low on internal storage in a bind.
As the gaming industry moves toward reliance on digital libraries instead of physical media, developers may argue that compromising loading speed is not worth the convenience, especially for open-world titles with substantive graphics/engagement. The Switch 2’s Game Card system is a clever advancement in convenience and portability but exemplifies the impossible tightrope that technology must walk between traditional physical media and gamer demands for performance.
