Nintendo’s next console is imminent. I’m starting to feel uneasy. I fret the company will follow a gem with a dud, like the Wii being succeeded by the Wii U. (Or the Wii U Shld Probs Skip This 1, as it might have been better named.) Also, I’m concerned the company might ditch innovation for the safe option of a Switch ‘Plus’ – a copy and paste job with MOAR POWAH. But my biggest worry is whether Switch cartridges will work with the new machine. Because if not, it’s time to jump up and down on the Nintendo CEO’s noggin, like a hyperactive Mario monstering a Koopa.
On the last of those points, there is hope. Nintendo has announced that “Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch”. Which sounds great until you realise that could mean all sorts of things. After all, NES software is playable on the current Nintendo Switch. But you can’t shove a NES cart into one. I’m OK with that. But I wouldn’t be so happy if our household’s stack of Switch cartridges* had as much relevance as Duck Hunt by early next year.
* And, yes, I know technically they’re game cards and not carts, but I don’t care. Don’t @ me.
Plug and pray
Nintendo has form when it comes to backwards compatibility. The Game Boy Advance line let you play original Game Boy games. Right up until it didn’t. And the Nintendo DS line followed the same pattern, literally including a GBA slot in each machine, until the DSi ditched that in the name of being slightly more streamlined. (And, let’s face it, cutting costs.)
On that basis, the very specific wording of Nintendo’s announcement is troubling: that “Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch”. Take that literally and you can imagine a scenario where eShop games will run on Nintendo’s next console, perhaps with fancy upscaling shenanigans. But if you’ve got a Switch cartridge? Too bad.
Perhaps we’ll all be invited to rebuy our games on the eShop. After all, that’s more lovely money for Nintendo, which rather likes it when you buy the same games over and over again. And with the further normalisation of digital as the default, there’d be less of that pesky discounting/second-hand market/people having the audacity to give a game to a friend to worry about. Things are much easier (for Nintendo) when no-one actually owns the games they play.
Avoiding a gaming graveyard
It’s unlikely Nintendo would go fully digital on a new console beyond ‘legacy’ games – and I’d hope not. Digital games are ephemeral. Once the stores you download them from are defunct and/or the hardware they reside on is dead, they’re gone. This is leaving holes in gaming history, as titles vanish into the ether. Physical media gives us a chance to preserve games for future generations to enjoy. And, for that matter, us as gamers to revisit in years to come.
I don’t want yet another case like my favourite App Store games surviving until the iPad Air they’re hosted on conks out. Or to end up jumping through hoops to get iPod click wheel games on to a rescued device. I much prefer physical media – but also for it to have greater longevity through working across more than one generation of console. I love that I can shove Tetris into my Game Boy Advance, or even a 40-year-old cart into a modern Atari 2600+.
Not that I’m suggesting I’ll be playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 2064, mind – assuming I’m still alive and vaguely coherent in an old-folk’s home that belts out Underworld on a loop rather than Vera Lynn. But it’d be nice if I could at least still play the cart on the Nintendo console being released a few short months from now. That’s surely not too much to ask.
