Stephen Kick, CEO of Nightdive Studios (which specialises in modern remasters of older, often out-of-print games) said that “seeing Nintendo do this is a little disheartening”, adding: “You would hope that a company that big, that has such a storied history, would take preservation a little more seriously.”

Videogame Heritage Society co-founder Professor James Newman is somewhat less convinced that Game-Key Cards will be a major issue, noting that it’s rare for a game on a cartridge to still be the same game years after release.

“Even when a cartridge does contain data on day one of release, games are so often patched, updated and expanded through downloads that the cart very often loses its connection to the game, and functions more like a physical copy protection dongle for a digital object,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Paul Dyson, director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at The Strong Museum in New York said the move to a future where all games are digital is “inevitable”, and that Nintendo has in fact been “in some ways, the slowest of the major console producers to be going there”.