Nintendo Has No Plans to Ditch Physical Games, Latin America VP Says

Nintendo has no plans to stop releasing games in physical formats, the company’s vice president and general manager for Latin America said this weekend. Bill van Zyll, speaking to Brazilian YouTuber Coelho no Japão at Brasil Game Show (BGS), the largest gaming event in Latin America, framed the decision as consumer-driven.

“Historically, we’ve been very agnostic,” van Zyll said, per GamesIndustry.biz. “We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily.” He added that there’s “no plans to ditch physical” because Nintendo knows how much fans like owning a copy.

The context is Sony’s July announcement that it will end production of physical discs for all new PlayStation games starting in January 2028. Sony posted the decision on the PlayStation Blog, which is Sony’s official news channel for PlayStation software and hardware updates, and cited a shift in customer behavior toward digital purchases, per GamesIndustry.biz. The move drew backlash from collectors and players worried about long-term access to their libraries, as GameSpot notes. Nintendo’s position lands as a quiet counterpoint: the Switch 2, which launched in June 2025 and is “barely just over a year” into its life per van Zyll, still supports both cartridges and the Nintendo eShop, which is Nintendo’s digital storefront for Switch and Switch 2 games.

That doesn’t mean every Switch 2 cart is a full game on a card. Nintendo sells Game-Key Cards, which are a lower-cost physical option that acts as a license key and still requires a download to play. Those have drawn their own consumer pushback when buyers discover the cart only unlocks the digital version, per Eurogamer. Van Zyll didn’t address Game-Key Cards directly in the BGS interview.

The statement is also notable for where it came from. Latin America is a region where physical game sales remain significantly stronger than in North America or Europe. Van Zyll noted that physical copies are particularly popular in Brazil and across Latin America, where players value being able to collect, share, and resell their games, per Notebookcheck’s write-up of the interview.

Physical games: Sony vs. Nintendo right now

Sources: GamesIndustry.biz, GameSpot.

Our read: This isn’t a commitment that physical games will last forever, just that Nintendo has no current plans to drop them, which is the right amount of hedging. A format decision like this could change with a single fiscal-year earnings call. What it does confirm is that Nintendo is happy to be the anti-Sony here. The Switch 2’s hybrid model still gives you a real cartridge on the shelf for the games that ship that way. For collectors weighing a Switch 2 against a digital-only PlayStation future, the physical-cart argument is one Nintendo just handed them for free. The contrast is sharp: Sony exits physical in January 2028, Nintendo still sells carts 15 months later, same industry, opposite bets.

Coverage: GameSpot, GamesRadar+. Switch 2 release dates are tracked on Pixel Herald’s Release Calendar.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report