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Sony’s announcement this week it would end PlayStation disc-based releases by 2028 has unsurprisingly raised questions about the future of physical games media on other console platforms.
If you are wondering about Nintendo’s position in this space, Circana senior director and video game industry advisor Mat Piscatella (who tracks hardware and software sales data in the US market) shared his thoughts with VGC about what to potentially expect in the foreseeable future.
He doesn’t actually see Sony’s recent news having any influence over Nintendo’s current decision-making or future “plans” in this particular case. For better or worse, Piscatella believes Nintendo will continue to do what is best for its own market:
Mat Piscatella: “My gut says Nintendo does what Nintendo wants to do, and I don’t see them changing anything in their plans based on what Sony or Microsoft do on anything, really. Nintendo is going to be Nintendo, for better and/or worse.“
He added how Nintendo has experienced some slight growth in the US physical market in the last 12 months, but it supposedly “won’t last” – noting how sales of physical video games have fallen every year in this location since the “late 2000s”.
In saying this, the retail sector in this market apparently continues to show support for Nintendo, and Nintendo also holds a “very strong share of physical software and hardware sales since the launch of the Switch 2”, which “could continue to increase”. Nintendo has also set up kiosks in-store to help encourage sales of its new system and software library.
Although Nintendo doesn’t appear to be pulling the plug on physical releases any time soon, the Switch 2 generation has seen it introduce Game-Key Cards, which function as a physical “key” to then download the full game via the internet.