‘There are no plans to ditch physical’: Nintendo commits to physical games

Nintendo has confirmed its commitment to physical games The statement comes as Sony abandons physical media “We go off of what the consumer prefers,” Nintendo declared Physical game releases are becoming increasingly rare these days , but one company that still plans to sell its titles this way is Nintendo .

The Japanese gaming giant confirmed as much in an interview that might come as some relief to fans of disc-based media — although don’t take it as a guarantee that things will stay this way forever.

Speaking to Brazilian interviewer Rodrigo Coelho , Bill van Zyll, Vice President & General Manager of Nintendo Latin America, explained that, “There are no plans to ditch physical [media].

We know how much the fans like it as well.” Nintendo’s van Zyll gave the example of the Nintendo Switch 2 , for which games are available in both digital and physical formats.

That's something Nintendo appears to be committed to continuing, at least for the time being, which could help to assuage the concerns of some fans.

Nintendo fans on social media seemed hopeful about the revelation.

“Maybe there is window for cartridges to make a comeback in some capacity,” mused one on Reddit , while another proclaimed that “I have no plans to abandon Nintendo.

The system works!” “I hope Sony takes notice,” wrote a third, referring to Sony’s decision to completely abandon physical games by 2028 .

Good news — for now (Image credit: Future) Of course, there’s no way to know exactly how long Nintendo will remain devoted to physical games for.

As van Zyll said in the interview, “historically, we’ve been very agnostic.

We go off of what the consumer prefers and take that into account very heavily”.

While that might mean physical releases are here to stay at the moment, van Zyll’s response doesn’t rule out a change of approach in the future if consumer tastes shift.

With that in mind, it’s worth considering that Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has previously noted that “Our business is well over 90% digitally distributed,” which explains why GTA 6 is going to be an entirely disc-less launch .

While Graft Theft Auto players and fans of Nintendo games are two quite different groups, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Nintendo follow Take Two’s example in the future.