Earlier this week, it was revealed that physical game cards released for the Tencent Nintendo Switch in China won’t be playable on global Nintendo Switches. [Thanks, Daniel Ahmad on Twitter!]
While this shouldn’t be a problem in most cases, as most the games announced already are available globally, such as New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, this may become a problem going forward if more exclusive games are developed for the system. For example, last July, Ubisoft announced a China-exclusive Raving Rabbids game themed after Journey to the West.
Meanwhile, the Tencent Nintendo Switch will be able to play global game cards, albeit only offline. This is because the Chinese variant will go through its own servers.
But just how will you be able to tell which ones are only playable on the Tencent Switch? Well, if the Simplified Chinese on the cover isn’t enough, each game box will have a ‘Tencent Imported’ logo on the bottom left. The game card code will also end with CHN (Hong Kong and Taiwan cards end with CHT). [Thanks, Chinese Nintendo!]
Either way, this is a weird bit of trivia that might not mean particularly much at the moment, but this may change in the future. After all, there are HD ports of Super Mario Galaxy and Donkey Kong Country Returns that aren’t playable anywhere else.
