Nintendo Says It Has 'No Plans to Ditch Physical' Games as Sony Ends PlayStation Discs in 2028

'No plans to ditch physical'

Nintendo has no plans to stop releasing games in physical formats, Bill van Zyll, the company's vice president and general manager for Latin America, said in an interview with Brazilian YouTube channel Coelho no Japão at the Brasil Game Show. "Historically, we've been very agnostic," van Zyll said. "We go off what the consumer prefers and take that into account very heavily. 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."

Van Zyll noted the Nintendo Switch 2 is barely over a year into its life and supports both digital downloads and physical cartridges, and said physical games are particularly popular in Latin America, where players value being able to collect, lend and resell them. "If you want that so you can trade or resell, that's fine, here it is, we're offering up that choice."

A sharp contrast with Sony

The comments land months after Sony confirmed it will stop producing discs for new PlayStation games starting in January 2028, a decision announced in July that sparked backlash over ownership, resale rights and long-term access to purchased games. With Microsoft expected to move the same direction, Nintendo is now the only major console maker publicly committed to physical media.

The fine print

Nintendo's position comes with one wrinkle collectors already grumble about: many Switch 2 "physical" releases are Game-Key Cards, cartridges that hold a license key rather than the full game, which downloads after insertion. Unlike a pure download code, the card is not tied to an account or console, so it can still be lent, traded or resold like a conventional cartridge. Full game cards remain common for many first-party titles.

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How this could hit the options market

Physical media is a slow variable for NTDOY, but it is a real one: Nintendo's audience skews far more physical than PlayStation's, and keeping cartridges preserves retail shelf presence and the used-game ecosystem around its platform. For SONY, the January 2028 disc exit is a margin and digital-mix story that traders will revisit as the date approaches, and any sign of consumer backlash strong enough to move software attach rates will show up in SONY flow first. Watch both names around holiday hardware sales data, when format mix gets reported.

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