Take notes, Sony: Nintendo has “no plans” to ditch physical games
“Nintendo being the goat of this generation was not on my bingo card.”
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- Nintendo says it has no plans to stop supporting physical games.
- Bill van Zyll said Nintendo follows consumer preferences and supports both physical and digital formats.
- Some fans praise Nintendo’s stance, while others expect the company to move digital-only later.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Nintendo says it's listening to its users and won’t remove physical games. Skeptics say it'll budge eventually.
Nintendo is taking a different approach from rivals like Sony, whose decision to go disc-less has caused commotion in the gaming community.
“There’s no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well, so our position has been to be agnostic,” said Bill van Zyll, Nintendo’s vice president and general manager for Latin America.
Van Zyll discussed the company’s position during an interview with content creator Rodrigo Coelho.
“We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily,” said van Zyll during the conversation.
He also noted that only a year ago, the company launched the Nintendo Switch 2 system, which combines both physical and digital gaming.
In the US, Nintendo Switch 2 game key cards saw a 631% increase in sales in 2026, according to Circana.
Users ain’t buying it?
“Nintendo being the goat of this generation was not on my bingo card,” wrote one Redditor.
“This is why I'm sticking with Nintendo over any other console company. Plus, I love games with an art style. Not realistic-looking movie games. Nintendo delivers,” shared another user.
“Cut to 3-5 years later, after their competition has all long abandoned physical, and they do it anyway,” wrote another Redditor reacting to Nintendo’s message about physical games.
Nintendo says it has no plans to ditch physical games: There’s no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well
by u/Turbostrider27 in NintendoSwitch
They predicted that such practice will become “an industry standard.”
“This is only because people who own a Nintendo still buy a lot of physical, if by any chance we hit the 10% share, I have no doubts that they will want the monopoly too, like Sony,” wrote another user.
Is Nintendo the good guy in the gaming industry?
The question about Nintendo’s future in physical games comes after Sony announced it will end physical games in 2028.
The company received backlash from users who raised concerns about digital game ownership, claiming that despite paying for these games, Sony doesn’t guarantee they belong to the user.
The company’s response also didn’t help the growing backlash against it, as it claimed that digital games are impossible to own and that users shouldn’t have a problem understanding this.
Meanwhile, Xbox has introduced a way for users to convert their physical games to digital via their Microsoft account and has also introduced changes to its Game Pass, including limits on gaming. Now, gamers will have cloud gaming limits of 15, 10, or 5 hours per month, depending on the plan.
