Nintendo has no plans to drop physical games, exec confirms

Nintendo VP and Latin America general manager Bill van Zyll has confirmed the company has no plans to go all-digital, saying Nintendo will continue supporting physical media for the foreseeable future. The comments came in a YouTube interview with Coelho no Japão.

Van Zyll described Nintendo's approach as "agnostic" — meaning the company follows consumer preference rather than pushing a single format. "We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily," he said. He also pointed out that Switch 2, now just over a year into its lifecycle, ships with both digital and physical support built in. "There's no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it."

The comments land in a charged moment for physical media. Sony announced PlayStation will go discless by 2028, a decision that drew widespread backlash from players and developers alike — Hideo Kojima publicly called it "really sad", and CD Projekt Red said it would be powerless to offer physical editions on PS5 if Sony follows through. Nintendo's stance offers a clear contrast, though the Switch 2 ecosystem isn't without its own physical-media controversy: a growing number of releases ship as game key-cards — cartridges that contain no actual game data and simply unlock a digital download — which has frustrated fans who expect a cartridge to mean a complete physical copy.

Nintendo holding the line on physical is welcome news for collectors and players in regions with unreliable internet, but how long that commitment lasts as the industry trends digital remains an open question.