Final Fantasy 7 Remake director: players should accept Switch 2 Game-Key Cards because the issue is speed, not cost

The director of the Final Fantasy Remake trilogy says Switch 2 players should accept Game-Key Cards are likely here to stay, because cost and storage aren’t the main issue they solve.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is releasing on Nintendo Switch 2 on January 22, 2026, but some fans were disappointed to see that the physical version of the game will be a Game-Key Card.

Game-Key Cards are cartridges that still require the game to be downloaded from the Switch 2 online store before the game can be played. The cartridge doesn’t contain the game data, rather it’s simply a ‘key’ that enables a download.

While Game-Key Cards have benefits over ‘code in a box’ releases in that they can be traded and codes expire much quicker, some players are still concerned that if a Nintendo download server is turned off in the distant future the games will become unplayable.

In an interview with JP Games, Naoki Hamaguchi – who co-directed Final Fantasy 7 Remake, directed Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and is directing the as-yet untitled final game in the remake trilogy – was asked about the decision to release Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade on a Game-Key Card, and whether he was aware of player criticism of the format.

Hamaguchi replied that he was aware of the concern, but explained that while some players believe Game-Key Cards are used by publishers to save money on cheaper carts or get more than 64GB of storage, the main reason they’re used is due to the speed limitations of having the full game on the cartridge.

“I have heard the reaction that the various Nintendo gamers have towards the Game-Key Card,” he said via an interpreter. “I understand where they’re coming from, definitely. I can see the things that they are maybe annoyed with, maybe why they don’t like it, and I get that, I really do. But certainly, among developers, the discussion about the Game-Key Card format is perhaps a bit different to what the fans maybe expect.

“It’s always, I think, looked at in terms of the memory restrictions. And that is an issue, that’s not something we can ignore, the fact that the standard cartridge has a smaller memory, and we have to work around that.

“But I think perhaps the biggest issue for developers, certainly for people like us who make high-end HD games, is the loading speed, because you compare that to the solid-state drive and the speed you can get from loading from that, it’s going to be inferior to that. It just has to be, that’s the way the media works, physically.

“So that’s the bigger issue, really, in terms of making games, making high-end games for the Switch 2, and what it allows, obviously, by doing a semi-download version of the game, you can then use the SSD and rely on that for that smoother loading. So that’s perhaps the bigger issue in terms of a developer.”

Hamaugchi stressed that because the Switch 2’s internal storage loads data faster than cartridges, high-end games are likely to continue to be released on Game-Key Cards going forwards, and he hopes players will eventually understand the main reason for this is performance-based rather than cost-based.

“This is just my personal thoughts about this, but I’d kind of like, if possible, maybe Nintendo fans to understand the Game-Key cards and maybe come to accept them as part of the culture of gaming on Switch, because it allows more opportunities.

“It’s an option – it’s not that everyone has to use it – but it’s another option to deliver the games to fans, and I think we could lose out on opportunities – there may be people, if we didn’t have that option, who wouldn’t get to play the game. So from a developer’s perspective, it allows us to bring more high-end experiences to Switch players, and I think that’s a good thing.

“I really get where people are coming from in terms of their negativity towards it, and there are good reasons and debates to have there. But if people come to accept it more, I think there are advantages too, and from a developer’s perspective, it does let us do things that maybe we wouldn’t otherwise.”

Hamaugchi’s comments echo those of Ubisoft‘s Rob Bantin, who serves as the audio architect for Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine, who explained earlier this month that storage speed was the reason the Switch 2 version of Star Wars Outlaws was released on a Game-Key Card.

“Snowdrop 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,” he wrote on Bluesky. “I don’t recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion – probably because it was moot.”

Stressing that some concessions have to be made when creating a handheld, he added: “To be fair to Nintendo, they have to consider a ton of factors when choosing components for a new console. The Switch 2 is a miraculous piece of kit in most respects.”