The Nintendo Switch 2 may be on its way, but the Japanese games company has announced a new feature for the incumbent that will hopefully also carry over to the successor. It’s called “virtual game cards”, which does a couple of things, but one of them is letting you share your Switch games to others.
If it sounds too good to be true, it’s because it kind of is. The feature comes with a lot of caveats, but first let’s get an overview of what these virtual game cards are. Primarily, this makes it so games you buy from the Nintendo eShop create a virtual game card of itself, which you then manage from a dedicated screen. This will allow you to transfer your digital games between a Switch and a Switch 2 over WiFi.
Now on to the sharing part. You can only share your games with someone who is in the same Nintendo Switch Online family subscription as you are. The feature is also only limited to sharing with one person in your family account at a time, and only for two weeks at a time. The start of the process also needs both devices to be on the same WiFi network.
On one hand, it beats not being able to share digital games on the Nintendo Switch at all. But at the same time, it’s a lot of limitations to work with, so if you have a subscription plan that’s already shared with a lot of people, and you want to lend a game out to someone that’s outside of that, well, you just cant. Not via this feature anyway.
(Source: Nintendo / YouTube)
