Star Wars Outlaws developer explains that Nintendo Switch 2 game cards are too slow for a physical game release — Snowdrop game engine uses disk data streaming to render the game world

A developer working on Star Wars Outlaws for Nintendo Switch 2 explains that the console's game cards were too slow for a physical release, leading to the use of Game Key Cards instead. The Snowdrop game engine relies on disk data streaming for rendering open world environments. The Game Key Cards act as a dongle for game ownership, requiring the card to be inserted to play the downloaded game. The decision to use Game Key Cards was not based on cost, but rather on performance considerations. The developer suggests that designing games for platforms with faster storage standards first could avoid such compromises in the future.