After some digging around by our @AfterTimeX journalists, it was discovered that the “Switch Flashcart” in fact has a name, “Mig Switch” and they agreed to answer a few of our questions about some points that weren’t fully clear to us, after watching that short video from one of their beta-testers last week.
As their product is ready now, they also kindly offered us a review sample, but our staff have declined because for one, we are not a review site and also because of all the legal ambiguity of “game backups” in our team countries, and most important our opinion is that although they are marketing their product as a “backup and development device” on their website: https://www.migswitch.com it is clear that many video gamers will use it solely as an “ultra-convenient piracy tool” on their Nintendo Switch consoles.
After reviewing their website, it seems also that the “backup” ROMs that are currently floating around out there on the Internet are NOT supported, as the format that the “Mig Switch” uses is slightly different, we don’t understand all the technical reasons behind this change, but you can be sure that “scene release groups”, won’t take long to make compatible repacks available to the piracy masses out there, as the instructions published on their website are clear, so it seems to be a very simple process.
In speaking more with their beta-tester about online play (as “Mig Switch” refused to answer any questions not related to pure backup play) he told us that he used one of his game’s “Cert/UID”, which he never shared to anyone before, to be able to play online with his other “game backups”, but so far he has never experienced any issues. Now, of course this will have to be verified in the long run with many gamers online using this “trick”… But, the team did confirmed their product has been tested and works on every single existing model of Switch they could find, and are very confident they are all fully supported.
Reading the comments from our ATX followers over on X, we also inquired about their choice of using the “game eject” function to switch to the next ROM on the inserted SDCARD, and if they fear it could damage the game port with long-term usage. Their answer was that “real life usage” is not like in the video the beta-tester released, meaning you don’t switch your games every other second or even every minute, and the overall quality of your Switch is high, including its game port, but they didn’t close the door to designing a second version of their Mig Flashcart, with a switch on the cart itself, and they were quick to point out, when considering the size of an actual game cartridge, there is more chances for a tiny switch to break with long-term usage than the console game port itself, which is sturdy. We guess that overall user demand will in the end decide the fate of them releasing a different version with a built-in switch.
Finally, the last and maybe most important question for would-be buyers, we asked the big one: Can Nintendo BLOCK your product with a firmware update. Their answer was a quite confident “NO”. Although only time will tell, plus they told us: “our product design is fully and conveniently upgradable”.
To be continued…