Nintendo Issues Official Statement On Physical Games

Published Oct 12, 2026, 9:56 AM EDT

Sharmila is an engineer-turned-gaming hardware journalist and freelance contributor at ScreenRant who has been covering the gaming and tech industry since 2021. While she first built her expertise writing about video games, she has since pivoted towards gaming hardware, with a focus on PC components, peripherals, handhelds, and performance-driven tech. When she’s not testing gear or writing about the latest hardware trends, she can usually be found diving into competitive shooters or keeping up with the evolving esports scene.

If you have been watching Sony’s decision to walk away from discs and wondering whether Nintendo would quietly follow, one of its senior executives has now given us a fairly direct answer. Thankfully, it’s the one physical media fans were hoping for.

Bill van Zyll, Nintendo’s Vice President and General Manager for Latin America, recently told YouTuber Coelho in an interview that the company has no plans to abandon physical releases, putting it simply as “There’s no plans to ditch physical.”

Nintendo Has No Plans to Abandon Physical Game Releases

Describing Nintendo as historically agnostic about format, Zyll said the company goes by what consumers prefer and weighs that heavily. He also added the Nintendo Switch 2 is barely a year into its life and was built to support both digital and physical games, with Nintendo well aware of how much fans like the physical side. That is a sensible position, but notice that it is a position about listening to shoppers rather than a principle about owning games, and those are two very different kinds of promise.

"Historically, we've been very agnostic, right? 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."

Sony has confirmed that it will stop producing new physical game discs from January 2028, and the move drew significant backlash and sparked worries that popular platforms like Nintendo and Xbox might adopt the same approach. Against that backdrop, Nintendo’s answer reads as a company happy to be the one that is not making headlines for taking something away, even if it hasn’t confirmed it’ll hold that line forever.

Switch 2 Game Key Cards Are Still Concerning

Before you settle into the good news, though, it’s worth asking what “physical” actually means on a Switch 2. Releases come either as traditional cartridges or as Game Key Cards, and the cards behave more like a code in a box, since the full game is not stored on them. Collectors have previously objected to this for an obvious reason, because they want their games preserved on the cartridge itself.

There’s a slightly awkward irony here, since the format that draws the loudest complaints is also doing well, with game-key card sales reportedly up 631 percent in the US year-to-date in 2026 (according to a sales report by NintendoEverything). If you are someone who buys a cartridge because you want the whole game in your hands, that number should make you a little uneasy, because sales figures are exactly the sort of consumer signal Nintendo says it follows.

As long as demand for physical games holds up, Nintendo seems content to keep selling them. The company hasn’t confirmed whether every release will include the full game or what happens when the next console arrives. How long this approach lasts as the market moves toward digital is a fair question, in case it crossed your mind.

For now, Nintendo Switch console owners can still choose between physical and digital, so keep buying the way you prefer. And remember that the loudest way to keep a format alive is to keep using it.