Nintendo Says It Has No Plans To Ditch Physical Games Yet

Unlike Sony, which has decided to move toward a digital-only game marketplace starting in 2028, Nintendo is sticking to an “agnostic” approach for the Switch 2 console. In a new interview, Nintendo’s VP and general manager for Latin America, Bill van Zyll, said the company will still offer both physical and digital versions of games to meet consumer demand.

“Historically, we’ve been very agnostic,” van Zyll said to YouTuber Coelho no Japão. “We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily. We also have a platform that was just launched. We’re barely just over a year into NS2 (Nintendo Switch 2), and it’s got both digital and also physical–that capability. There are no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well, so our position has been to be agnostic.”

Like its predecessor, the Switch 2 lets you run games by using either foul-tasting physical cartridges or downloads from the Nintendo eShop onto the console. One big difference in this generation is the introduction of Game-Key Cards as a low-cost solution for developers, which act as authentication keys for games.

These will require you to both insert the cart and download the game to the Switch 2, but since the cartridges aren’t tied to your account, you can still sell them off at a later date if you choose to. Some Switch 2 games–like first-party Nintendo games and the upcoming Stellar Blade: Complete Edition–do contain the full game on the cartridge.

While not everyone is a fan of Nintendo’s Game-Key Cards, the middleground between digital and physical games is still more well-received than Sony’s push for an all-digital future. The company is still cautiously pushing ahead with its plans, but as critics have argued, there are several big risks attached to this drive to transition away from physical media.