The Cost of Ownership
Shortly after Nintendo announced the Switch 2 they revealed that it would support regular game cards as well as Game-Key Cards, a new type of physical game card that does not contain game data. Instead, the Game-Key Card is a "key" to downloading the full game.
We collected MSRP data on all Switch 2 physical releases in North America to compare the cost of physical cards and Game-Key Cards.
For this first graph we're excluding Switch 2 Edition releases as they are hybrid game cards that work with both Switch 1 and Switch 2 consoles.
From the graph, we can see that the median retail price of physical Switch 2 games is $59.99 regardless of whether they are Game-Key Card or not. There are a few outliers when it comes to physical game cards, namely MIO: Memories in Orbit at $29.99 and The Disney Afternoon Collection at $39.99, both well below the median price. Mario Kart World is on the other end of the spectrum at $79.99.
Given the fact that 64GB game cards are so expensive, we were surprised to see MIO: Memories in Orbit selling for just $29.99. We contacted Focus Entertainment for comment but did not hear back.
Diving into the data a bit more, if we pull Nintendo first party published titles out we see the median price for physical cards drops to $49.99. This makes sense considering a good number of the $70 games were published by Nintendo. Game-Key Cards stay the same at $59.99 (Pokémon Pokopia is the only GKC release published by Nintendo so far).
Lastly, if we include Switch 2 Editions as well as titles published by Nintendo, we see the median price of Switch 2 Editions is actually highest at $69.99. Nintendo publishes 9 of the 13 Switch 2 Editions, which explains why the median price is so high.
Based on the data we have right now, Game-Key Cards make up over 60% of all announced titles, which is a pretty striking figure given they contain no actual game data on the game card and are less expensive to manufacture.
Physical Card — 23 games
Switch 2 Edition — 13 games
Game-Key Card — 56 games
Total: 92 games
Data transparency notes
- Data captured February 26, 2026
- Assuming the Switch 2 release of Outbound is not a Game-Key Card. Conflicting MSRP from retailers (both $39.99 and $49.99 at time of publishing)
- Data only represents standard edition releases – purposefully excluding Collector's Editions and Deluxe Editions