Sharing digital games – it's been a thorny subject for ages now, with all the big console-makers seemingly united in thinking that it's a nice idea that can't easily be implemented. Xbox famously backed away from digitally transferrable games in the run-up to the Xbox One, when people rumbled that it would make it far more restrictive to play your own games, and that seemed to be that.
That was how I had my systems set up, so that my girlfriend could play at least some of the games I got access to without needing to buy them a second time. It worked decently, but the fact that my own main console had to connect to the web so regularly was really annoying, and occasionally meant that I'd get on a plane and not be able to actually play.
Just before the Switch 2 launched, though, Nintendo changed its system completely, removing this "primary" and "secondary" nonsense and replacing things with what it calls Virtual Game Cards. Now, in theory, your downloaded games would be exactly like your physical games.
When you download a game from the eShop now, you get a little animation of a card being inserted into your Switch. This lets you know that this game is now associated with the console you have in your hands, but it also acknowledges that you can reassign it if you like.
The process is pretty easy and takes only a few seconds if you have both consoles handy. You just head to your Virtual Game Cards menu from the main home screen of the Switch or Switch 2, choose the relevant account, and get to see a list of every game you own, along with an icon telling you if it's active on your machine or not.
From here, tapping on a game lets you either load the game to your current console or to another. I can do this to quickly switch games between my Switch 2 and my girlfriend's, for example, and it works a treat. There's a hard limit of two consoles per account, though, which means this really is perfect for two-console households rather than those with more Switches in play.
That said, you can also select "Lend to Family Group Member" to give a 14-day loan of the game (which you can renew at the end in the same way), which means that there's also flexibility if you use that system in Nintendo's setup.
I'm not going to pretend that I think this system is 100% perfect; I'd obviously rather live in a world where I could log myself in and out of as many consoles as I like, and assign games freely among them. However, in the current reality where piracy and game-sharing are complicated topics, I think Nintendo's built a system that genuinely works well and feels pretty fair. It's also a rare example of a system that's become better over time, rather than worse – kudos for that.
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