'Star Wars: Outlaws' developer says Nintendo Switch 2 game key card actually helped performance

One of the most controversial aspects of the nascent Nintendo Switch 2 era might have seriously benefited at least one third-party title.

Star Wars: Outlaws was recently ported to Switch 2, after previously being exclusive to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles. It's a hugely ambitious port that exists only in "game key card format" for those who prefer physical purchases, and according to Ubisoft developer Rob Bantin on Bluesky, it was actually key to getting the game running on Switch 2 at all.

First, some context. Game key cards are a pretty roundly unpopular format for physical releases that Nintendo introduced alongside Switch 2. It's basically a license for a digital download that lives on a cartridge, as opposed to the game data being on the cartridge itself. Most agree that it's bad for historical preservation (Nintendo will shut off those download servers someday), and so far seemingly the only benefit to them has been as a cost-cutting measure for game manufacturers who don't want to shell out for cartridges with high storage capacities for bigger games.

According to Bantin, though, Ubisoft chose this format for Outlaws not to save money, but because the developers had a hard time getting the game to run acceptably on a regular cartridge due to in-the-weeds technical issues surrounding the Snowdrop engine that Outlaws runs on. By putting the game on a game key card, Ubisoft was able to circumvent those limitations.

"[The Snowdrop engine] 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 said. "I don’t recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion - probably because it was moot."

For what it's worth, that decision seems to have paid off. The Switch 2 version of Outlaws has been very well received by experts who perform technical analysis of games, like Digital Foundry. That particular channel called it an "extraordinary" port that maintains a level of visual quality that's pretty comparable to the Xbox Series S version, including ray tracing features that almost seem like they shouldn't be possible on Switch 2. Having played the game myself on PS5 (and also having a basic understanding of the power differential between that console and Switch 2), it looks very impressive.

All of the aforementioned problems with game key cards still exist, to be sure, but in this case, the format may have justified its existence a little bit.