PSA: The KOTOR Switch bundle saves no money, and locks you out of the first game until the second is out

The bundle is up now, but it unlocks on June 8

So uh, don’t buy the KOTOR Switch bundle until after June 8, when the second game is out. Weird, right? Bundles and the eShop: sometimes a bad combination!

As we’ve established, Knights of the Old Republic II is out on June 8. KOTOR 1 came out on Switch on November 11, 2021. If you individually buy the latter outside of the bundle, you can play it right now, no issues. But if you buy the bundle, KOTOR 1 will be locked to the SKU of the second game, and won’t work until June 8. Lame, right? Especially when you consider that the bundle saves you zero dollars (each game is $15, and the bundle is $30).

The flaw was pointed out by Redditor hyp3rstrike, who purchased the bundle, and found out that the first game wouldn’t boot, getting the “you cannot play this software or downloadable content yet” message. According to another poster in the same thread, they were able to get a “one-time refund” for the KOTOR Switch bundle, but were allegedly told to read the fine print on how bundles work.

Now, this has happened before with bundles, and isn’t a completely unique situation. But it’s worth a PSA, and the practice is still stupid, even in 2022! Bundles that involve SKUs of games that are currently out, especially when said collection has you download each game separately (which the KOTOR Switch bundle does), should just work. Unless something is changed, consider this a warning for the KOTOR Switch bundle and others like it on the eShop.

Given the popularity of the Star Wars franchise, a lot of folks have called into Nintendo customer support about this: so fingers crossed it gets pushed up the chain and gets fixed eventually. On the other side of the equation, the fact that the bundle serves no purpose, with no monetary savings, also stings.

[Update: The creator of the Reddit thread, hyp3rstrike, has reached out to note that they “lodged a support enquiry with Nintendo Australia,” and were told that they were “still investigating and would be in touch.” When they asked for a refund to purchase the games individually, they were told “no.” Hopefully if enough people point out the bundle lockout issue, the policy can be changed altogether.]