As PlayStation looks to abandon physical discs in January 2028 and Xbox’s Project Helix in unlikely to launch with a disc drive, Nintendo is the last hope for physical games. And it seems that Nintendo has no plan to abandon physical games at all.
In our exclusive report yesterday, we outlined the massive cost that Nintendo Switch 2 games are produced at in comparison to PlayStation and Xbox. However, despite the massive gulf in production costs, analysts claim that Nintendo is unlikely to follow in the digital-only future of PlayStation and Xbox.
Renowned analyst and Circana senior director Mat Piscatella explained in a discussion with VGC that PlayStation’s move away from discs “was inevitably going to happen someday”, although the end of production is coming sooner than expected.
Piscatella explained that physical game sales have fallen every year since 2009. However, as we reported last mont, physical game sales climbed year-on-year for the first time since then due to the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. The reality is that Nintendo fans are the predominant buyers of physical games, especially when it comes to first-party offerings.
Piscatella argues that “Nintendo does what Nintendo wants to do”, adding that they “don’t see them changing anything in their plans”. Additionally, compared to the likes of Xbox and PlayStation, Nintendo still sees a huge presence on retail shelves, both for new releases as well as pre-owned titles.
“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,” the analyst claimed.
PlayStation has announced that it will continue to have a retail presence, albeit with code-in-a-box releases similar to this year’s launch of GTA 6. However, Piscatella predicts that this will coincide with a further reduction in physical retail spending as consumers don’t want cases entirely for codes.
Nevertheless, there is a degree of unpredictability in the market. As we reported, Nintendo’s production costs for physical games are enormous compared to other platforms, and the ongoing RAMageddon caused by the heavy demands of AI datacenters is causing physical Nintendo games to cost more and more to produce every few months. Nevertheless, Nintendo is eager to have a retail presence.
Outside of Piscatella’s comments, Nintendo has a significantly better split of physical and digital sales when compared to other platforms. While PlayStation sells just 15% of games, around 70 million per-year, as physical copies, Nintendo only sells around 67% of copies as digital copies.
With this in mind, almost half of Nintendo game sales come from physical copies, including the controversial Game Key Cards. As physical copies still account for so many sales of Nintendo games, it seems unlikely that real cartridges will disappear from Nintendo platforms anytime soon. (This number is also likely skewered from the pack-in release of Mario Kart World with the Nintendo Switch 2.)
