Analyst Says Nintendo's Plans Will Remain Unchanged Despite Sony Killing Physical Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 July 2026 / 3,562 Views
Sony announced this week it would be ending the production of physical game discs for PlayStation consoles starting in January 2028 and all new releases after this date will be in digital formats only.
Circana Senior Director and Video Game Industry Advisor Mat Piscatella speaking with VideoGamesChronicle said Sony making this change will unlikely cause Nintendo to react. Though, another report says Xbox is testing a disc-to-digital feature.
"My gut says Nintendo does what Nintendo wants to do, and I don’t see them changing anything in their plans based on what Sony or Microsoft do on anything, really," he said. "Nintendo is going to be Nintendo, for better and/or worse.
"Retail has already leaned into Nintendo support more and more over the past few years (Nintendo also holds very strong share of physical software and hardware sales since the launch of Switch 2 in particular), so this could continue to increase, sure.
"It’s not like boxes on shelves will go away entirely with this change. There will be more codes in box, more merch, maybe more special editions with swag included, that kind of thing. But the change should also result in the continued decline in physical game retail spend.
"But yeah, we’re kind of in dartboard territory when it comes to things. The day is young (in the US at least). Anything could still happen today, tomorrow, surely Monday. It’s madness."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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If you want Nintendo to continue to produce Carts (and yes, GKC) then you will have to support them...
They wont end them if they make up a significant portion of their sales
Nintendo is currently around a 60-40 split
60 physical?
Of course Nintendo will not follow up! The percentage of physical games of their first party games is way to high for that (50% or even higher). The other thing is that Nintendo is dependent on parents buying games for their kids. While kids are already accustomed to just get a download code or card as gift, the exposure you get at retailers is just too important for Nintendo and I don't think retailers will be happy to just sell download cards of games.
I mean that of course applies to MS and Sony too, so not really an argument. You're acting like kids don't own xbox and playstation haha. Xbox and Playstation aren't adult systems while Switch is kid system, tons of kids own all three systems, tons of adults own all three systems. So that has nothing to do with Nintendo needing physical.
Some things that could lead Nintendo to need more physical though is that, being handhelds, there can be multiple systems for a household so physical games can be shared between owners in a family, whereas with a console that is not needed. Also the other two companies have simply embraced and pushed digital more than Nintendo. Nintendo has yet to ever come out with a digital only model like the other two have. Also I wouldn't be surprised if there are simply more older adults on Nintendo who have been lifelong Nintendo gamers and so grew up having cartridges and are more into physical media than many XB/PS owners, many of whom have only been buying discs (which have less physical attachment) and digital steam games their whole life.
Here's the deal with physical media as someone who is an all-digital guy and why I think Nintendo might not ever give up physical media: a substantial portion of Nintendo's customer base is families, and those families have birthdays and Christmas. For those of you with kids (under about 12 years or so, and especially under 9 or 10), what makes a more substantial impact? A gift card or an actual visceral game?
The funny thing about teenagers are, they are happy with gift cards, and even if they understand it, it never sinks in that gift cards are just cash with limited spending opportunities.
I like how cartridges (or game cards nowadays) will outlive discs as the main (and only) physical game console media.
Nintendo like physical stuff, toys, collectors editions, trading cards, amiibos, merch. Their adult audience are game collectors and their younger audience are kids who like toys & physical items such as toys & fun gadgets.
I'm so glad Nintendo understands their audience (and have done from the early days before anyone else). They have always been wise.
I don't think Nintendo are going to end physical games before the end of this generation no. No doubt they'll be gone eventually but Sony's announcement won't have an effect on when.
If we see a first party key card release then you can start panicking. Pokopia is the closest we've got to that.
Agreed. There a good chance that Nintendo's next system - which is a good 5 years away - will be digital only. If it is another handheld/console hybrid, I could see Nintendo keeping the cartridge slot on it for backwards-compatibility (which is nice on Big N's part since the one slot accepts both Switch and Switch 2 cartridges), but with all new Switch 3 games being digital only.
That is all really big ifs though. Backwards-compatibility in particular is now 100% tied to them partnering with NVIDIA again, since Switch 2 titles use DLSS. Even if Nintendo was willing to do software emulation if they switched to ARM or AMD or Intel or IBM or something, it wouldn't matter, as they wouldn't be allowed to emulate DLSS upscaling from a copyright standpoint.
Never thought about the DLSS tech making Nvidia mandatory for BC before.
Though people have managed to swap out DLLs and modify files to get DLSS only pc games to use FSR instead on pc in the past. So if Nintendo were to switch from Nvidia for whatever reason it might still be possible to have BC and use another upscaler, but yeah it at the very least adds a hurdle to overcome.
Oh yeah, there is definitely no technical reason for DLSS to not be available on other hardware in the future. I am thinking though there is no way around it from copyright/NVIDIA IP standpoint. Like NVIDA I would guess could easily sue - and I'm sure win - if Nintendo circumvented DLSS in a next-gen console, because at the end of the day, you are trying to work-around someone else's IP without paying them.
And that would be the real issue - Nintendo HATES paying royalties to anyone, for anything. It's why they use cartridges for some many systems, it's why they used those weird small discs for GameCube, it's why even when their switched to regular DVD-ROMs for Wii and Wii U, they never put an official DVD playing application on them, and so on and so forth. No Dolby Digital or DTS sound support on any Nintendo console, ever. Heck, if Nintendo COULD remove the HDMI port, to avoid paying the HDMI Consortium fees, I'm sure they would!
