Nintendo executive confirms company has “no plans to ditch physical games”

Bill van Zyll, VP and general manager for Nintendo in Latin America, has reiterated Nintendo’s stance on physical media, confirming that the company has no immediate plans to move to an ‘all-digital’ future.

In an interview with Youtuber Coelho no Japão, van Zyll acknowledges the interest fans have in physical media – reignited lately thanks Sony’s controversial decision to announce PlayStation will be discless by 2028 – and says the company will continue to invest in physical media for the foreseeable.

“Historically, we’ve been very agnostic, right?” says van Zyll in the interview. “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.”

When van Zyll mentions being ‘agnostic’ here, he’s referring to the fact that the Switch 2 ecosystem revolves around both digital versions of games – primarily purchased via the Nintendo-run eShop – and physical game cartridges that either contain full games or act as ‘licenses’ that allow you to play digital games when inserted. These game key-cards are not immune from controversy themselves, however: there is often consumer push-back when it turns out the physical version of a game is ‘just a key card’.

Sony’s decision to kill off disc-based games has been met with furore, but recently there have been signs that the company may be considering changing its mind about the move. Developers like Hideo Kojima have given their two cents about the proposition, and even CD Projekt Red has said it’d be powerless to do anything about physical media if Sony decides to stop supporting it.

So then, it’s nice to see Nintendo publicly support the continued existence of games as physical media. In the current landscape, however, it’s hard to predict how long it will stick to its guns on the topic.