Pre ordered the day it was available here in the UK, so excited for release day! Just wondering from everyone who pre ordered in the US, did you have some stores do in person pre orders only too? Here, Currys (major electronics retailer) did in person pre orders only, which I thought was a good idea to prevent scalping as the online stock everywhere was bought up nearly immediately.
I do wonder what console manufacturers will do in order to keep at least some all-physical releases around as game sizes grow. Blu Ray has topped out at 128GB on the highest end discs, and flash storage isn’t dropping in price as quick as before for making larger cartridges. Maybe we will see more cases like Mario Kart World where the physical version is more expensive? However, I do think there might be less key card games as Switch 2 goes on, as likely a big motivation for key cards at launch is the current low production volume and high price of SD Express cards (which the cartridges are based on). Shelf space and shipping are a considerable cost to publishers, so they would have some motivation to avoid any costs related to the eShop hosting if possible.