While Sony remains committed to phasing out physical media, Nintendo is taking the opposite approach. In a recent interview with the Brazilian YouTube channel Coelho no Japão, Bill van Zyll, Nintendo's VP and General Manager for Latin America, confirmed that the company has no plans to abandon cartridges.
"Historically, we’ve been very agnostic, right?" stated van Zyll in the interview.
The Nintendo executive firmly continued, "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. It's got both digital and physical – that capability. 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."
In an era where the gaming industry is rapidly shifting toward digital distribution, it is comforting to see at least some companies still supporting physical media. The core issue with digital purchases is that you do not truly own what you buy; instead, you are purchasing a license to access the game, unlike owning a cartridge or game disc. Some storefronts, such as GOG or itch.io, offer DRM-free downloads of the titles you purchase, but only a handful of them exist.
However, even cartridges cannot completely escape the march toward digitalization. With the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo introduced game-key cards, physical cards that contain a license to download the full game data. Modern AAA game releases have exceeded the storage capacity of traditional cartridges or discs. For instance, Black Myth: Wukong and the upcomingGrand Theft Auto VI use this code-in-a-box model.
On the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, cartridges max out at 32GB and 64GB, respectively. That is not much capacity by modern standards, so publishers turn to game-key cards as a compromise for a physical release. Compared with fully digital releases, game-key cards bind the license to the card, so owners can still trade or sell them like normal cartridges.
Owning physical copies can sometimes cost more than going digital, especially for Nintendo’s first-party titles. Effective as of May 2026, physical versions of first-party Nintendo titles sell for $10 more than their digital counterparts. The price increase was due to manufacturing, packaging, and distribution costs for cartridges. However, Nintendo frames the pricing adjustment differently, claiming it lowered digital game prices by $10 to pass the savings on to consumers.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Nintendo has announced plans for the Switch 2 to mirror its predecessor's lifespan, about six to seven years. No one anticipated Sony's decision to phase out game discs, so Nintendo's future remains uncertain, even though the company pledged to continue physical releases. With the Switch 2 launching just last year, we can at least look forward to another six good years of physical media.
Follow * Tom's Hardware on Google News**, or* * add us as a preferred source**, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.*
Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
-
That is disingenuous at best.
They already have shown that they pay lip service to physical games at best. Shipping physical cartridges with game license keys only on them, and no actual game content.
I personally am a BIG fan of purchasing games on physical media, and all my switch/switch2 games are on cartridge.
But having to research "is this game actually on the cartridge, or is this cartridge the equivalent of a completely empty filesystem with one file called 'license.txt' on it?" before every single purchase is already wearing on my nerves. Reply
-
They've had the key card controversy, although I heard that all the first-party games include the data.
The physical is merely a bunch of NAND, that could suffer from bit rot if left alone for a number of years. Obviously past carts have had problems with things like dead save batteries.
Physical doesn't matter that much from a technical perspective. What it should do is allow cheap resale of the games. That's the main benefit.
Nintendo has announced plans for the Switch 2 to mirror its predecessor's lifespan, about six to seven years. No one anticipated Sony's decision to phase out game discs, so Nintendo's future remains uncertain, even though the company pledged to continue physical releases. With the Switch 2 launching just last year, we can at least look forward to another six good years of physical media.
Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida argues that the PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2 lifespans should be increased as long as possible: