The ongoing debate for physical game ownership continues as Japan’s national archival library has deemed Switch 2 Game-Key Cards as ineligible for preservation.
A new interview with Famitsu and Japan’s National Diet Library (NDL) confirms Switch 2 game-key cards do not qualify as game media, and as such will not be preserved at the museum.
The fact of the matter is Nintendo Switch 2 game-key cards do not actually contain the games in question, so they do not qualify as “media containers” and are thus ineligible for archival purposes.
To put things into perspective, the National Diet Library has thus far archived around 9,600 physical copies of domestically released video games.
The library has accumulated almost every written word that was ever published in Japan, both physical and digital releases. The latter have only recently become an object of curiosity for NDL, given that the associated libraries have been operating since the 1940’s.
Multiple subcategories of videogames do not qualify for archiving. Online-only titles, games which require special external equipment like USB cameras or VR goggles, Switch and PS Vita ROMS, which include the players’ save files, and so on do not qualify.
Even though online-only games are nothing new (like Nintendo’s own Satellaview from the 1980’s), this subject has non-the-less been a sore spot for video game preservation enthusiasts. With the rise of uncompressed and unoptimized assets in recent years, video game filesizes have boomed to sizes that rarely justify commitment to physical media.
This is all too familiar to PC gamers who have been greeted by a cardboard disc instead of a physical copy of their purchase multiple times at this point.
The NDL public relations representative stated they are currently only accepting physical copies of video games. Though given the fact that they’ve begun accepting e-books and digital scans of books, the ruling may change and include digital download titles.
As things stand, the Stop Killing Games consumer movement is only more justified to exist and proliferate, given how much people are being cut off from their games by these online server-dependent practices.
