{"id":174308,"date":"2025-08-25T12:31:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T12:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/174308\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T12:31:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T12:31:12","slug":"japans-national-library-says-game-key-cards-are-not-eligible-for-preservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/174308\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s National Library Says Game-Key Cards Are Not Eligible For Preservation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Raidou<\/a>Image: Ollie Reynolds \/ Nintendo Life<\/p>\n

Japan’s National Diet Library<\/a> (or ‘NDL’, for short) is one of the biggest libraries in the world and, from the year 2000, began to obtain video game CDs and cartridges for preservation purposes.<\/p>\n

According to an article from Famitsu<\/a> (thanks, Automaton<\/a>), however, the library does not consider the Switch 2’s Game-Key Cards as ‘proper’ physical media and therefore will not be accepting them into its 9,600-strong catalogue of game titles.<\/p>\n

It shouldn’t really come as a surprise when you consider what Game-Key Cards are. As discussed at length since the Switch 2’s reveal back in April, Game-Key Cards don’t hold any data beyond a license to download a game title from the eShop.<\/p>\n

Not only does this present potential issues regarding storage and the near-mandatory need to purchase SD Express cards, but it’s also a huge risk to preservation efforts should the eShop ever suspend its functionality.<\/p>\n

So yeah, no one’s going to preserve a piece of plastic that has no meaningful data on it, right? But to be super clear, the NDL stated the following:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSince a key card, on its own, does not qualify as content, it falls outside of our scope for collection and preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Seems about as clear-cut as you can get. Nintendo has recently been attempting to gauge interest in Game-Key Cards via customer surveys<\/a>, but at the time of writing has not made any moves to introduce more options for third-party publishers and customers alike.<\/p>\n

Only a handful of third-party Switch 2 games have received a proper physical release, and according to a recent online listing, Yooka-Replaylee<\/a> can potentially be counted amongst the elite few<\/a>. An official announcement seems to be just around the corner, so we’ll be sure to provide an update as soon as we hear more.<\/p>\n

Does this come as even a remote shock to you? Leave a comment with your thoughts and let us know.<\/p>\n

[source famitsu.com<\/a>, via automaton-media.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n

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Related Games<\/dt>\n
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\"Ollie<\/p>\n

Nintendo Life\u2019s resident horror fanatic, when he\u2019s not knee-deep in Resident Evil and Silent Hill lore, Ollie likes to dive into a good horror book while nursing a lovely cup of tea. He also enjoys long walks and listens to everything from TOOL to Chuck Berry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image: Ollie Reynolds \/ Nintendo Life Japan’s National Diet Library (or ‘NDL’, for short) is one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":174309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[46239,394,395,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-174308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-game-key-card","9":"tag-nintendo","10":"tag-nintendo-switch-2","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115089420047848992","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}