Thankfully Nintendo doesn’t seem set to do away with physical video game sales any time soon as the company says that a healthy 38.5% of its sales are physical editions. This news comes in the wake of Sony stating that they are doing away with traditional physical releases in 2028 when the PlayStation 6 is sure to be around.
Nintendo says 38.5% of its sales are still physical editions
Nintendo is making fun of Sony big time. I hope the PSblackout will tell Sony a thing or two.
Until Nintendo stops with their game key card bs they stay in the dog house
If nintendo is in the dog house, does Sony and Microsoft live in a dung pile? As much as game key cards suck, I do appreciate that I actually own the game and I can sell it, give it to friends, return it, or choke on it. You can’t choke on a digital code, can you?
I understand your point, of course, but you still have to agree that Nintendo really needs to stop producing the Game-Key Card.
Except the decision to put games on key-cards is completely up to third parties. Nintendo has stated that they do not intend to use them for first party titles. So whine all you want, but whine at the publishers doing it and not at Nintendo.
When Nintendo pulls the servers, those key cards aren’t going to do crap. No better than digital.
When would they pull the server? I mean key cards still suck, they can take up a big chunk of space on your console. But I still appreciate that I actually own the game. I am about to go to a retro convention and I am going to sell a copy of puyo puyo Tetris 2s. If it was a download code, I couldn’t resell it. That’s one point for game key cards. They still suck, but it’s better then not owning the game.
Nintendo has yet to pull the download servers for the Wii. I think we’re good.
This is not fair. All of their games bar one understandable exception have proper physical options. The game key cards are accommodating 3rd parties who otherwise would not release any kind of physical edition. And as anyone will tell you, GKC’s are better than a code in a box or only having digital as an option. I have Pokopia as a GKC and it is shared between 3 switches without any complications or messing around. And even if this game was fully physical, you’d still have to copy most of the game to the hard drive because the nature of the game.
61,5% are digital sales, despite the fact all Nintendo games are also fully physically available, without the need to install something first.🤷♂️
That’s still about 2/3 in digital… I don’t think Nintendo will continue to sell physical at this pace…
I’d like to know some more specs on this though. Is it including Digital only content apart of this? Because DLC isn’t physical. Also Nintendo has a HUGE presence with stores here in America. Target, Walmart, Bestbuy, Meijer, etc. All sell Nintendo Toys, Games, Products, etc I cant see them just abandoning their partners like that
38.5% is closer to 40%. In what world do you cut 40% of your business and call it progress?
2/3 digital u cra cra that’s like 40 percent physical… That’s a ton of money to lose
Nintendo is sure mocking Sony 100%.
If u buy digital your a dirty communist!
What a stupid comment
The best thing to do now is buy up all the fully on disc PS4/PS5 games that you can if you own a PS5, especially the best deals or clearance ones, it might be close to next gen of consoles but the PS5 still plays moderately demanding games quite well. And if that’s not good enough then well, you still have PC, regardless of hardware pricing being in the toilet for now.
PS5 might be the last PS console to support physical games, I wouldn’t be surprised if prices of said games rise later for that reason, at least some of them anyway.
Interesting. I would have figured the percentage would have been a lot higher on nintendo. Nintendo doesnt have good storage options so i would have figured 80 pecent on the physical buyers. So the fact its 38 percent now tells me it will go a lot lower. I wouldnt expect the switch 3 to have disc. Of course nintendo will crow about disc availabilty til then
Thanks to Nintendo for publishing this.
This once again proves that physical copies are a must-have for many people.
Nintendo really spun ‘only 38.5% of our sales are physical’ like it’s a victory lap. That’s less than half. Congratulations on announcing that digital has already won in your own ecosystem. Cope
This is not so little that it makes one up physical media.
No, 38.5% of Nintendo’s overall revenue came from physical games. Revenue and Physical/Digital splits are two completely different things. In FY27/Q1 which was this last quarter, Nintendo made 132.6bn yen from digital sales. 84bn yen of that revenue was full digital game titles like Pokopia or Tomodatchi Life. 48.4bn yen came from DLC, NSO, Upgrade Packs & Smaller titles that don’t have a physical release, for example Pokémon Fire Red. So that 48.4bn yen needs to be removed from the equation.
Overall Nintendo pulled in 215bn yen this quarter. Subtract the 48.4bn that leaves you with 166.6bn yen on games that have both a physical and digital option. Subtract the 84bn yen that we know came from pure digital sales and that leaves us with 82.6bn yen. Which leaves us with the following revenue for games that are available both physical and digital.
Digital = 84bn
Physical = 82.6bn
Seems like a 51/49 split to me.
That’s why this article is misleading. Physical games are 39% of their overall revenue. When you subtract all the other revenue streams and compare the pure game sales 1 to 1. It equals out.
Exactly. It’s literally the same way Sony has manipulated people into thinking that it’s only 15-20 percent physical sales when they’re including games that have only digital purchases and dlc etc. Sony is being misleading on purpose. I don’t think this was Nintendo misleading I think it was a little shot at Sony honestly.
Nintendo isn’t misleading anything, all of these numbers are spelled out in their financial Data. They say exactly how they break their numbers down.
They show the pure revenue for digital game sales that have a physical option, which I listed above. Then they list the revenue of digital only, DLC, NSO & upgrade packs as a separate line item on the balance sheet.
I’m a shareholder and have been reading these quarterly reports for over a decade at this point.
The problem here is that media outlets are misconstruing the physical revenue for physical game sales vs digital game sales of the same titles.
Game-Key Cards are bad and purchasing them guarantee the end of physical media for Nintendo. I will never purchase that garbage and nany are with me. Mif there weren’t Key Cards developers would 100% still bring physical media to Switch 2 just like they did on on the original. They aren’t choosing Key Cards to save money. They are choosing Key Cards to make maximum profit and to phase out Physical Media that every corporate suit wants
As for Sony, nothing says no disc no buy than the same people giving ps5 it’s biggest hit of the year so far with digital PS3 ports of black ops 1&2 selling 11+ million, bought by the same people squealing no disc no buy, boycott Sony, ps blackout! 😂 No wonder Sony won’t take people seriously. And I dont mind switch 2 key card games, if the complainers actually bought one they’d see download speeds and loading speeds are faster for the key card games than all the game on a cartridge
Hoitler is proud of all digital downloaders and own nothing be happy crowd types