Ceremony can be a PITA,.no argument here.

But I would be shocked if Nintendo made a digital “eject” erase anything on the local console.

As I understand it, switch 1 digital games are console-bound, but you can migrate your whole console to a new device (such as if your switch breaks.). This was terrible and unfriendly, and why almost all of my family’s switch games are physical.

I doubt “share once and let everyone play but the owner” was an intentional promise from Nintendo, but I’d have no trouble believing a tale about their DRM checks leaving open a hole like that.

If we still need to buy one copy of a gamer per simultaneous player,.then the rest of the differences are just ceremony.

Nothing indicates that moving a Nintendo digital card requires uninstalling the game locally. It just, like steam, does a DRM check to see if it’s being played elsewhere.

Steam sells non-transferable lifetime licenses to each game you “buy”, that let you play it on one PC at a time but never transfer it to anyone else, even as part of an inheritance after your death.

If you have a family there is a “sharing” plan which allows you to let family members also play some of the games in your library, but not at the same time.

Nintendo is imposing a bit more ceremony if you want to share digital games each time you share them, but the essential “one device at a time” nature is the same that steam imposes.

Nintendo made a huge deal about virtual game cards, saving us from exactly what you’re afraid of.

Not as good as what Sony and Microsoft do, where we can essentially install our whole library on every console we have, but it’s about as good as what Steam does.

Plus they’re bringing back a “game share” like feature, so some multiplayer games should be playable in a local family with only one purchase.

There is a mythical “Sony fan” customer who pays extra for their video game consoles, and justified that by believing it comes with a right to be special and awesome and play games no one else is allowed to.

It’s a pantomine of a Nintendo fan, who pays for an underpowered console for first-party games that use unique controllers. None of whom would ever complain if their games were sold on PC so long as they could bring the controller over.

AFAIK, the only real people who want exclusives on PlayStation are Sony employees and shareholders.