IIRC NES, SNES, and Game Boy cartridges have a battery for game saves that eventually needs to be replaced.

The point is a good one though: can we preserve the games so that they'll be playable hundreds of years (or more?!) from now, much as we can still play tabletop games from antiquity (backgammon, 9 man morris, chess, mancala, go, senet, etc.?) Whether the cyborgs of the 25th century will still want to play Mario Kart is unknown however.

It does, and "preserving" Switch games that aren't even out yet doesn't constitute preservation. See Yuzu case where they specifically used leaked copies of Zelda games to make those compatible with the emulator, while accepting financial retribution. Sometimes the hypocrisy is just too blatent for companies not to care.