Star Wars Outlaws is a controversial Switch 2 game-key card release, but one Ubisoft dev says that's because the standard cartridges "simply didn't give the performance we needed"

Star Wars Outlaws trailer shots — (Image credit: Ubisoft)

A Ubisoft developer has explained why Star Wars Outlaws was shipped on a game-key card for Switch 2.

I really do like the Nintendo Switch 2 so far, but outside of Cyberpunk 2077, I haven't felt the need to buy a single third-party game physically, because pretty much every single one otherwise is a game-key card. While I think that Nintendo labelling them is better than games like Doom: The Dark Ages, which is basically a game-key on a disc for PS5, I still have no interest in buying a physical game that isn't on the card, and many feel the same – there have also been concerns about the potential impact the key cards could have on game preservation.

However, it sounds like the format may have uses outside of being a cheaper cartridge option. In a response to Digital Foundry's ‪John Linneman on Bluesky‬, Ubisoft Snowdrop engine audio architect Rob Bantin explains: "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." Bantin adds: "I don't recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion."

That doesn't mean that every Ubisoft Snowdrop game is bound to the game–key card however, as Bantin explains, "I think if we'd designed a game for Switch 2 from the ground up it might have been different. As it was, we'd build a game around the SSDs of the initial target platforms, and then the Switch 2 came along a while later. In this case I think our leadership made the right call."

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