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The MIG cannot do any of that “other stuff”. Its only use case is piracy (technically, its only dubiously-legal use case is backing up your owned cartridges). The only code it can cause the Switch to execute is signed, official Nintendo code, exclusively when paired with a valid cartridge key. It can’t be used for music playback or emulation or alternate desktops or as an entry point for custom firmware or for homebrew applications. It can’t even load game updates or DLC. Your memory of DS carts is irrelevant, the MIG is a completely different type of product.

RCM on the Switch enables piracy (of dumped games from carts) and homebrew/emulators and mods and cheats and piracy of non-physical games/DLC. The MIG only enables piracy/backups of physical games and can never do anything else. You can’t even do save-based cheats with a MIG since the saves are stored on the console.

You criticize Nintendo’s security for “letting any random cartridge run software” when actually the Lotus firmware is still one of the most secure parts of the Switch. RCM access is a holy grail exploit and even with it supercharging any Switch reverse engineering for the whole console’s lifespan, the MIG is the only known thing that can pass a pirated game through the Lotus. And the MIG released really late into the Switch’s life cycle, so it required a ton of engineering to make. It’s nothing like the flashcarts from the NES-DS era at all. There is an analogous product to the MIG for the 3DS called the Sky3DS which similarly could only play pirated cartridge dumps and not be used for any custom code (though with the history of 3ds hacking, the Sky could be used for game-based entrypoints to full CFW like ninjhax or oothax).

I don’t know what your thing about playing old carts is supposed to mean. If it’s not clear, I’m pro homebrew and backups and believe that piracy (specifically, the defeat of DRM) is the only way to preserve software in any meaningful way. The MIG isn’t a product I use or own, my Switch is a first-gen with the bootloader vuln. Those Pokémon carts also “held up” fine? The save file is vulnerable to battery death but the cartridge still “works” and there are methods to back up the save file or even perform a battery replacement without damaging the save. But that’s got nothing to do with the MIG or the Switch.

The MIG isn’t “any random cart”, it needs to be running its own firmware on its CPU to “defeat” the Lotus (cart slot) firmware’s security measures. And “defeat” is in quotes because what it’s actually doing is supplying the authenticator with the actual key it wants. It doesn’t “bypass” or “unlock” the console, it sends a real key to a real door in a way that “looks” identical to what a real cart would do. That key isn’t part of the ROM either, it’s a per-copy unique key that decrypts the ROM portion of that cartridge. You can’t take a key from one game and use it to unlock another, so MIG compatible (MIG generated) dumps need to also have the ‘key’ dumped. You also can’t use a MIG to run custom/modified code in any way, since no custom code has a valid auth signature. It’s only usable for spoofing a retail game cartridge.

Nintendo even tracks the usage of each unique copy of a cart on their backend, and uses some form of check to permaban “pirates’” entire consoles from online features. We don’t know exactly how this works, if it’s “this key is in use in two places at once” or “this key has been used by 1000 consoles” but there is evidence that shared MIG dumps do cause console bans. This theoretically also means bans for legitimate used copies could be issued: if I go to the GameStop and buy Mario Odyssey and dump it with a MIG, then share that dump online and it becomes “the common MIG dump”, then sell the game back to GameStop, the dude who buys that used copy will get “caught” as a pirate if Nintendo uses “played that specific copy of Mario Odyssey” as a ban criterion.

The firmware and CPU architecture on the MIG are proprietary and complex, which is why it’s currently just MIG and not “any random cart”.

They don’t need to push “a majority” of current physical-preferring customers to digital, if the physical copy loses them 30% of the profit and 38% of sales for a game are physical, that means pushing half of new physical buyers over to digital and losing the other half of those customers entirely is slightly behind breaking even. That’s before assuming that a single dollar spent on used copies would have instead been spent on the eShop.

The only reason for Nintendo to not abandon these customers entirely is if they aren’t actually physical copy die-hards in the first place: they’re good little subscription paypiggies or totally fine with buying eShop exclusive games anyway. Their data currently leans in favor of tolerating the used market and lower margins on physical game sales. It will very likely shift, especially when it comes time to renew the agreements they’ve made with their manufacturing and shipping providers.

Nintendo’s doing what Sony did, testing the waters to see how many of their customers are willing to ditch physical for digital. They’re doing it by up-pricing physical first party games, while Sony did it by charging you an extra $100 (+33%) up front if you wanted to have the ability to play discs on your console. Sony is now acting on the customer data they have from their experiment, Nintendo will (as usual) be a generation behind. Right now, getting a physical copy for $60 vs a digital one for $60 is kind of a no brainer, unless you really don’t like swapping cartridges. As soon as customers start to ask themselves if having that cartridge is worth another $10, Nintendo will have the data they need.

To the dev/publisher/console storefront operator, a used game sale without a DLC attachment is the same as a pirated copy. Same result: you play zelda, nintendo receives $0.

Killing the used market is why Sony’s killing discs, full stop. Sony (or anyone else) doesn’t make the full value off of a disc game because they had to pay a bunch of manufacturers and shippers and middlemen. So if a digital copy makes them $60, a physical one new makes them let’s say $35 of the customer’s $60. And a physical used one makes them $0, even though the customer paid $40. Don’t forget this also applies to third party games: Sony gets a cut of every digital sale and new disc sale, but $0 from every used sale. If a million used $40 games get sold, that’s Sony watching customers spend $40 million on Sony products without Sony getting a dime - even if we pretend that every used game buyer would be a non-buyer instead of willing to pay full price, Sony goes from getting $0 to getting $0 from those customers when they kill used games.

All Sony’s calculus has to say to make killing discs “worth it” is “some percentage of people that buy games physical (thus we get less of their $60 that they are provably willing to spend) and used (thus we get nothing from their $20-40) will now be buying digital copies”. That percentage does not need to be high.

Even Nintendo’s 38% (which refers exclusively to Nintendo games, not eshop exclusives and third parties that generate Nintendo revenue) is lower than it needs to be to ensure physical is the “right choice”. Every physical sale is a lower profit per sale for Nintendo, if they make 38% “sales” of a given game with 40% overhead (cartridges are way more expensive than blu-rays to manufacture and source), that means the physical copies actually represent 22% of a given game’s profit. And then you consider how many of those physical buyers would buy digital if the other option was “don’t buy Zelda”. That’s why Nintendo’s current strategy is to pass the non-savings on to the customer by pricing physical games higher than downloads.

Nintendo is intentionally misrepresenting the value of their physical market to one-up Sony. This is a company that argues in court that every download of TOTK from a pirate website is $60 that would have been spent on the game. Seems to me that they’d have a much easier time believing that every purchase of new TOTK from a GameStop is $60 that would have been spent on the eShop, and that some number of $40s spent on the used game would have bought it digitally if they couldn’t have the savings from a used cart.

Honestly it never ever made sense to price a digital download at the same point as a physical object. Providing a digital download is entirely infrastructure costs, the cost of delivering “a copy” to the customer is fractions of a penny. Meanwhile, for a cartridge, for every copy, Nintendo (for example) has to buy a bunch of plastic and EMMC, image that flash storage with Mario Odyssey, print labels and stickers and encase that chip in more plastic, wrap that plastic in more plastic, ship those crates of plastic across the ocean, all to sell them to walmart and gamestop that take a cut of the sale themselves. When a customer downloads Mario Odyssey, all sixty dollars go straight to Nintendo.

Not just the installers, but plenty of games (all of GOG’s catalog, but also a bunch on Steam) don’t have DRM at all. They’ll work just fine if you run the executable file without the “store” running (even if you got the exe file from Steam/etc and can’t re-download without a login thus functional servers and account in good standing and internet connection).

Nintendo can already brick your cartridge over the internet and make it require game updates (via system firmware updates). They have already done this with Super Mario Wonder on Switch 2 - the game will not run without an update download. You can’t revert firmware versions on a DRM box like the Switch, and new cartridges (even ones with “the full game” on them) will require and include firmware updates. Playing the console online or purchasing any digital-only content (or downloading free patches) also requires the latest firmware, and there are whitelist mechanisms in place for Nintendo to outright say “you cannot run v1.0 of game X on system version 16.7.2U”. The v1. 0 being on a cartridge has no bearing on this functionality.

The only way to “play video games without relying on the internet or a company’s server” legally while being 100% sure that the company can’t do what they did to Mario Wonder is to buy and maintain multiple outdated firmware consoles that are isolated completely from the Internet. That’s obviously infeasible, so the only way to “play video games without relying on the internet or a company’s server” is the complete defeat or removal of DRM. On Nintendo platforms, that means piracy, full stop. On PC, there are a ton of games that are DRM-free digitally distributed products - those are the endgame here, not chips or discs. After all, with no DRM, you can put your copy of Slay the Spire on as many flash drives or DVDs as you want!

Yep, the only resilient form of preservation is digital files stored in multiple locations with no DRM. No account system redownloads, no piece of plastic and metal. Only drm-free releases or pirate copies

3ds games do not pass the “hammer test” of digital product resiliency. They aren’t even properly tied to an account. If I smashed your digital-purchase-laden 3DS with a hammer, or threw it off a bridge, you’d never legally get those games back again. Even buying a secondhand 3ds with the right games installed (as legal purchases) violates the license terms.

currently, while the servers are up, the Switch passes the hammer test. Buy a new Switch, sign in to your account, re-download your games.

Note that neither of these are true preservation because the threats to game preservation are more varied than “smashed your console with a hammer”. And also that physical copies are borderline meaningless in an era where the majority of games have DLC. If I hammer-test your 3DS but you have Smash as a cartridge, you’re still never gonna legally play as Cloud Strife again.

The Wii, 3DS, Wii U, and Switch all got hacked thoroughly before the console’s end of life and thus the legal preservation situation is mostly irrelevant, but the currently ironclad Switch 2 is a ticking time bomb.

You always love to see when game devs come back to add more Polish to their game.

For whatever reason, a game company can make your “physical copy” require a digital download to function. If a company decides they don’t want you to play a game (or version) anymore, it being on a cart or disc is not insurance against it.

And if this practice continues for Switch 2 games, or was in practice for the Wii U, or etc etc…

It’s a bad practice, even if right now there are ways around it for one game. It’s a bad practice even if it’s only for the current console on the current firmware. It turned a physical copy someone bought into a keycard. I’m of the opinion that all physical console games have been keycards since the day they started having day 1 patches, but at least that argument has the reasonable counterpoint of “you can still play the buggy incomplete v1.0 that’s on the cart/disc, that makes it better than Switch 2 Game Key Cards, which are better than account-locked Digital Games”.

This is direct and complete proof that your physical copy means nothing. The company can still restrict your access whenever they want to. The Switch 1 still gets firmware updates, after all, and firmware updates can’t be rolled back. The physical copy guarantees fuck all in the face of every preservation concern that’s a criticism of digital downloads. DRM-free digital and piracy are the only trustworthy methods of preservation.

This is still yet another point against those people insisting that physical copies mean anything. Right now, it’s “just update the game and you can play it”. But that’s exactly as limiting as a digital copy - you still need an internet connection, an account in good standing, the company’s CDN to be online, and everything else to play the game that’s “on” your glorified $60 DRM key.

As more Switch 2s get firmware updated, this change means every “physical copy” of Mario Wonder has become a “Game-Key Card” retroactively. The only difference is that the download is slightly smaller for a GKC.

And don’t forget that if you somehow lose access to the digital product called “v1.1.2” without losing access to your save file, you still can’t use that save file with the helpful little bit of plastic you have with v.1.0.0 on it. This is very possible with 3DS games, because the physical cartridge stores the save file but game updates are installed to the system memory/SD card. The 3DS also ties your licenses to the console, not to an account, which means that if you lose your 3DS but still have your copy of Smash Bros, replacing the 3DS will let you redownload the patch but not re-buy or re-download the DLC. Without piracy or buying a secondhand 3DS from someone who has the Smash DLC, you’d never be able to be Cloud on Smash 3DS again.

Physical game copies have been practically irrelevant from a software preservation standpoint since the X360 and PS3. Nintendo took an extra gen to catch up as usual. The only meaningful preservation work that can be done for modern game consoles is cracking the console’s DRM so that even the “digital-only” games and all updates/DLC can also be backed up somewhere that will tolerate the death of all Nintendo servers and devices. Thankfully, Nintendo’s software has never had an era where this isn’t true by the end of the console’s lifespan (sometimes it becomes true really early, like with the Wii and Switch). We just have to hope that the homebrew wizards find something on the Switch 2, even if it’s a limited exploit that needs a hardware modchip and only works on launch models.