You might not have thought much of Nintendo’s recent update that introduced “virtual” game cards to the Nintendo Switch, but when you think about it a little, it has some profound implications for digital games.

I Love the Switch Lite

One interesting side effect of virtual game cards is that I now have much more motivation to use our Switch Lite again. My wife and I both have full-sized regular Switches, but I always liked the form factor of the Switch Lite. This was actually a proper handheld that I could take places. It was almost as portable as my New 3DS XL, but sadly didn’t fold in half. At least not more than once.

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Making the Lite My Primary Switch Is Not Ideal

Unfortunately, neither I nor my wife really used our Switch Lite much for one glaring reason—how Nintendo handles accounts. Before the advent of virtual game cards the way things worked is that you had to designate one of your Switch consoles as the primary. The Primary console doesn’t need to be constantly online. Any games you’ve loaded onto it will work offline indefinitely, because it has a permanent license saved locally on the device.

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So close to the answer.

Your secondary Switch works exactly like the primary one, except if you lose your internet connection for any reason, you get kicked out of your game until you can connect again. Since the Switch Lite is the console I would actually want to leave the house with, that means it would have to be the primary console.

The trouble with that is my docked Switch would then throw a fit every time my fiber went out, which, sadly, can be a few times a day sometimes.

Now I Can Use the Tiny Switch Without Messing Around With Console Settings

Thanks to the virtual card system, all I have to do now is pick the games I want to play on my Switch Lite while it’s online, and then load them virtually. After they’ve downloaded, you can play them indefinitely on that console until you move them back.

The only catch is that you need both consoles to be online when you move the virtual cards around, and they have to be physically close to each other as well.

Even better, my wife and I both have the Lite registered to our separate accounts, and it turns out that we can both play each other’s games on the Lite as well. So, basically, all users on a Switch can play a virtual game card on that system, just like you can a physical cartridge.

Honestly, this is an absolute game-changer for me, and the Switch Lite will definitely stop gathering dust now.

Some Games Are Better on the Lite

Some Switch games are generally better in handheld mode, and in my case with my OLED games like Diablo II: Resurrected are best played on that inky OLED panel. However, there’s something to be said for the better pixel density of the Switch Lite, and many 3D games that look far too chunky on the regular Switch screen sizes are more enjoyable on the Switch Lite in my opinion.

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So, I’m slowly sorting my games into ones that I’d like to take with me or prefer to play on the crisper Switch Lite screen, and it has the benefit of stretching my available game storage across an entire extra Switch. Pixel art games too, by the way, can look a lot better on the smaller LCD than the same 720p resolution stretched out to 8-inches.

Nintendo Should Have Done This Years Ago

When we got the Switch Lite, I had no idea that I’d have to go through the whole primary console registration dance every time I wanted to leave the house with the smaller console. Sure, this is exactly how it works with, say, a PlayStation 5, but that’s not a handheld console! I’d stupidly assumed that Nintendo had a sensible solution for people who had a Switch Lite as their secondary Switch.

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Well, now the Switch does have this solution, but I really wish they’d thought of this many years ago. At least now, with the soon-to-be-released Switch 2, we’ll start the generation off with virtual game cards as a feature. Now what I’d really like to see is the ability to permanently give away or sell virtual game cards, but that’s probably too much to ask for.