Nintendo is continuing to double down on its game-key cards, and now there appears to be a pretty decent chance that Pokémon Pokopia will be released physically as a game-key card.
Nearly simultaneously as it was announced the game would release on March 5, 2026, the video below was published on Nintendo’s YouTube. Seems a little late to post an instruction video on game-key cards on Nintendo Switch 2 that have been out for six months now, but Pokémon Pokopia was used as a “sample” for a game-key, and expectedly, people are not happy about that association.
Will Pokémon Pokopia Be a Game-Key Card?
As of this writing, we can not say with absolute certainty that Pokémon Pokopia is a game-key card on release, but this is definitely not a positive look.
The fact that the video shows the Pokopia cartridge that says “sample” on it could mean nothing, but it could also be Nintendo testing the waters. To this point, there has not been a Nintendo-made game that has been released as a game-key card. For the video to use a game releasing in four months kind of seems like a way to announce that without coming out and saying it directly. If they wanted to avoid the speculation, they could have easily used a third-party game or even an already released Nintendo game to use as a sample. Using Pokémon Pokopia feels like a very direct choice.
Needless to say, players have not taken the game-key card situation very positively. Because Nintendo is only producing 64 GB cartridges, it doesn’t make much thinking to see why third-party developers are choosing the game-key route for smaller games, but with Pokémon Pokopia, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company could be opting for the same route because the game apparently is only 10 GB.
