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When do I have to watch out for mandatory downloads?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Many Switch 2 carts include just the license, no game data. So, assume you can't play Switch 2 without downloads.
any way to know ahead of time?
Game Key Cards are all labeled as such on the bottom of the box. If it doesn't have a big infobox explaining this, then it's a normal cart.
Also note, @worhui@lemmy.world, this labelling is only a Switch 2 thing. I believe it's up to the developer how they want to give the warning on Switch 1 cases, if they even need to at all (either way, the labelling varies game-by-game on Switch 1). But for Switch 2 games, it's a requirement, and is always at the bottom of the game art.
Edit: Overhauled 2nd sentence to clear up potential misunderstanding.
Game Key Cards don't exist on Switch 1, those are all full cartridges.
I know that. I wasn't saying they do. But download-only Switch 1 carts do exist, and what I am saying is that there is no requirement for third-parties to label games a certain way on Switch 1 when making the customer aware of the download. On the Switch 2, if it's a game key card, it has to be labelled the exact same way on every single game at the bottom of the art no matter what, while on Switch 1, how these games are labelled varies from game-to-game, probably due to publishers varying preferences. On Switch 2 it's all standardised.
What Switch 1 cart is download-only? The closest thing I know of are some compilations like Final Fantasy X/X-2, which does have X on the cart but then gives you a download code for X-2. And even that is labeled on the box.
Hogwarts Legacy is one example. It only contains a very small portion of the game on cartridge (The tutorial area). The rest you have to download.
There were lots of other games that did this, I've seen plenty of games like this on store shelves, but I just can't recall any more specific examples at the top of my head, since I usually just mentally ignored the existence of any Switch games when they weren't released properly on cart.
More often then not, download-required games were just a download code with no cart, but there are quite a handful of games that released as a cartridge that basically acted like a key. I don't know if they differed at all in functionality to the Switch 2's key cards because I never bought one to test, but I believe it seems to work practically identically to the Switch 2's Game-key cards.
There's not many games fully on cart on switch 2, like cyberpunk. But switch 1 has a lot of modules (I'm a collector / curator). Watch for the message on the packaging.
Some are also mixed like batman - first game on module, the others are download. Might still be worth it.
Also most games work fine off cart but might not be fully updated and depending on the updates that might be relevant or not.
It's complicated.
Since you seem I to it I have heard the switch 1/2 games are flashed carts as opposed to the old style of chip making. Do they need to be ‘charged’ to keep the game data?
Yes, sadly both Switch 1 and Switch 2 carts are flash memory. It was the same with the 3DS too, which is already starting to have a handful of games degrade and have issues or outright stop working.
While this is not yet the case for the Switch 2, the Switch 1 can be homebrewed and then used to rip your own offline digital backup copies of your cartridges. You can then continue to play the physical cartridges until they eventually stop working 15-20 years from now (or from whenever that copy was manufactured)
On the 3DS, there's actually a way to 'charge' the games with a feature that comes with Godmode9 which is automatically installed only when you homebrew the console. It doesn't make 3DS carts live forever, but it does SIGNIFICANTLY increase it's lifespan if you give them a charge once every few years or less. If you have a 3DS, I recommend doing this, as even the cartridges that seem to work fine often have already degraded a bit, and charging a working cart is still just as good.
Maybe you don't care about 3DS, but I just wanted to point that out since I'm hoping that someone develops their own equivalent version of this cartridge charging solution for Switch 1 games, and eventually Switch 2 when that gets successfully hacked, too.
I'm not sure about the exact type but no, afaik there's no battery or anything inside. However, sadly, almost anything can and will degrade and we don't yet exactly know when that will be.
But honestly, I've got quite a few old modules around me (eg gb gg lynx pce - though not collections per se mind you) and some of these have seen really rough days but all of them still work fine. So it might not be relevant to our lifespan and easier to put out of our mind, but still it could surprisingly happen. Working in IT though being certain to maintain data is not a trivial matter of redundancy and moving.
Anyhow. Switch 2 games afaik are more akin to ssd because it has to be streaming data at a far quicker pace to the ram, like mkw or cyberpunk. So in a technical sense I would say the risen price is generally worth it. Switch 1 modules are more like slow mass storage (eg SD, the slow ones, explicitly not EX SD).
But back to the point, none of these need "charging" in that sense (but still degrade).