It is less bad than code-in-a-box. That's not a high bar, but it is less bad.
There are two main reasons to buy physical:
Ability to share, trade, and resell your games. These key cards still support this, whereas code-in-a-box did not. So, slightly better.
Then there's the peace of mind that your games will still work in the distant future. I think if you ask most people who primarily buy physical, myself included, we'll say this is the main appeal of physical games, and the big reason why key cards don't feel acceptable.
Some day when the servers eventually go offline, these key cards will become bricks. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. We have no idea how long Nintendo will support them for, and they're not going to hard commit a timetable out loud for us. But we know it can't be forever.
But even for standard physical games, there is some uncertainty regarding their long-term future that I'm not sure people realize. When those servers eventually go online, your cartridge only has 1.0 on it, you won't be able to get patches. That's better than a brick, but for a lot of games that's probably not the version you want to play.
And then the even darker concern is bit rot. No form of physical media is permanent. Every disc and every cartridge will eventually degrade. Worse yet is that for many forms of media, we don't even know how long they're set to last for, we only find out once some of them start to fail. Cartridges are generally better than discs, but beyond that we truly have no idea how long Switch cartridges should be expected to last.
Switch 1 emulation on the Steam Deck already has much worse performance than a Switch, given the overhead of emulation. There is no possible way it can run Switch 2 games.
Eventually, perhaps. I do not claim to have a crystal ball powerful enough to peer decades into the future. But right now, for this generation, I can say we're a long way from that point just yet.
This is very true. It's not just that Nintendo makes good games, it's that a lot of their games are wildly unlike anything else on the market. The reason I'm losing my mind over a Kirby Air Ride sequel is because there hasn't been any other game like the original from 2003. I've waited 22 years for another game that could scratch that itch.
So it's not a similar device. Comparing to phones is rather misleading, given that phones do not have active cooling and wouldn't actually be able to run the kinds of games the Switch hardware could without catching on fire in the process. They aren't gaming hardware.
Exactly what hardware at a similarly competitive price point and form factor are you comparing it to when you say it's behind?
The Switch 1 didn't use the very best top of the line parts that money could buy, but if that's what you're fixating on then you're missing the fact that neither did the Steam Deck. The Switch made compromises to hit a $300 price point in 2017, and the Deck made compromises to hit a $400 price point in 2022.
The Deck is targeted squarely at enthusiasts. While it's a fantastic product for that niche, anyone who thinks it's going to capture a market the size of Nintendo's any time soon is living in a fanboy bubble.
Hell, right now Valve isn't even capable of manufacturing half as many Decks as Nintendo will manufacture Switch 2s. They literally can't sell that number because they can't produce that number.
The Vita had far more problems than just memory cards. You came very close to identifying what the real problem was, Sony couldn't sustain supporting two separate platforms at once. And conversely, Nintendo unifying onto a single platform was what saved the Switch.
What "standards" are you comparing it to? The Switch 1 was behind home consoles, but that's not really a fair comparison. There was nothing similar on the market to appropriately compare it to, no "standard".
Five years later the Steam Deck outperformed the Switch, because of course hardware from five years later would. But the gap between the 2017 Switch and 2022 Deck is not so vast that you can definitively claim in advance to know that the 2025 Switch 2 definitely has to be worse. You don't know that and can't go claiming it as fact.
All we know so far is that the Switch 2 does beat the Deck in at least one major attribute: it has a 1080p120 screen, in contrast to the Deck's 800p60. And it is not unlikely to expect the rest of the hardware to reflect that.
I've been a gen III hater from the start. It's a major step down from GSC in so many ways. Bad region, bad soundtrack, horribly lopsided type representation, much less content, and you had to start all over with no way to link and trade over your GSC 'mons.
Ruby/Sapphire were even worse at release, as you only had 202 Pokemon in the Dex and no one knew yet that all of the missing species would eventually be obtainable by linking to the far too many additional games they split them up across.
Puyo Puyo Chronicle, the last good installment in the series, don't @ me. I'd like Sega to make a proper new game, but they're clearly never ever ever ever gonna do that, so the next best thing they could do is port a good one. What I need most is a game that's on all major platforms with crossplay.
Nothing you've just described has anything to do with genetics. You're talking about nurture, not nature.
The premise of Idiocracy, that this setting came about because dumb people had too much sex, is fundamentally flawed. That isn't how genetics work and it isn't how intelligence works.
And look, for a work of fiction I can suspend disbelief on the premise and still enjoy the story told in that setting, I'm not even saying it isn't a funny movie, but realistic is not a word that can be applied to any part of the film.
Honestly, I think the movie would've been improved if you chopped off the intro and just reduced it to "Man gets isekai'd into a world where everyone's stupid because that's just what this fictional world is."
It is less bad than code-in-a-box. That's not a high bar, but it is less bad.
There are two main reasons to buy physical:
Ability to share, trade, and resell your games. These key cards still support this, whereas code-in-a-box did not. So, slightly better.
Then there's the peace of mind that your games will still work in the distant future. I think if you ask most people who primarily buy physical, myself included, we'll say this is the main appeal of physical games, and the big reason why key cards don't feel acceptable.
Some day when the servers eventually go offline, these key cards will become bricks. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. We have no idea how long Nintendo will support them for, and they're not going to hard commit a timetable out loud for us. But we know it can't be forever.
But even for standard physical games, there is some uncertainty regarding their long-term future that I'm not sure people realize. When those servers eventually go online, your cartridge only has 1.0 on it, you won't be able to get patches. That's better than a brick, but for a lot of games that's probably not the version you want to play.
And then the even darker concern is bit rot. No form of physical media is permanent. Every disc and every cartridge will eventually degrade. Worse yet is that for many forms of media, we don't even know how long they're set to last for, we only find out once some of them start to fail. Cartridges are generally better than discs, but beyond that we truly have no idea how long Switch cartridges should be expected to last.