In a nutshell: Game-key cards continue to be a contentious issue within the Switch 2 ecosystem. According to Ubisoft representatives, downloading a newly purchased game from the internet is the preferred approach if you want the fastest possible storage performance.
The Switch 2 is off to a strong start, but some gamers are still frustrated by Nintendo's design choices for its latest hybrid console. The Japanese company has leaned heavily on game-key cards, which contain only a digital license that must be used to download a game from the internet. Most third-party developers are likely to adopt the game-key card system as well, and for good reasons.
Rob Bantin, the audio architect of Ubisoft's Snowdrop engine, shared an interesting insight about Switch 2 game performance during a discussion about Star Wars Outlaws. Snowdrop is Ubisoft's proprietary engine that supports PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch platforms in a single package.
Bantin explained during a recent BlueSky discussion that Snowdrop relies heavily on data streaming to render its open-world environments. However, Switch 2 game cards simply couldn't meet the performance and quality targets Ubisoft had set for the Star Wars Outlaws port.
The eMMC-based cartridge system Nintendo chose for physical Switch 2 games should provide a data rate of up to 400 MB/s. Meanwhile, MicroSD Express expansion cards are expected to at least double that throughput to around 800 MB/s, while the Switch 2's internal SSD can reach speeds up to 2,000 MB/s.
Some more "static" games may only load slightly slower from a game card, but streaming-heavy titles like Star Wars Outlaws are likely to experience a more significant performance penalty.
The game card's relatively slower performance has also been noted by other developers. Charles Tremblay, VP of Technology at CD Projekt Red, said in a recent interview that the data rate of the MicroSD Express port was "great," while game cards were just "okay." Despite this, a significant majority of sales (75 percent) for the Switch 2 port of Cyberpunk 2077 still came from physical cartridges.
Bantin further explained that using the game-key card format for Star Wars Outlaws was essentially mandatory because the game was designed for SSD-equipped systems. Had Ubisoft redesigned the Switch 2 port from the ground up, the outcome might have been different.