In many ways, 2026 will go down in history as the year in which video games have tried to make physical media irrelevant to the industry. Sony has given it up, setting an end date of January 2028, but that doesn’t mean its competition has done the same. Microsoft has yet to make a statement on it, and Nintendo already has. They’ve said that, in fact, they have no interest in letting go of a format they consider part of players’ interests.
A company focused on its customers
Those were comments from Bill van Zyll, Vice President and General Manager of Nintendo in Latin America. In his own words, “historically, we haven’t preferred any particular format. We pay close attention to consumer preferences. Also, we’ve just launched a platform. Nintendo Switch 2 has been out for a little over a year, and it offers both digital and physical games. That’s why we have no plans to abandon physical media. We know how much fans enjoy it too”.
Of course, there’s a catch. Switch 2 does have physical media, but Nintendo considers Game-key Cards a physical format even though they are nothing more than physical cards that let you unlock a digital download. Something that can hardly be considered physical media.
In any case, these statements confirm that, while PlayStation is clearly interested in doing away with physical media, this isn’t something shared across the whole video game industry. It remains to be seen how the other players react and, given the opposition to Sony’s plans, it remains to be seen how it ends up moving forward with them. So it seems that the end of physical media in video games may have been greatly exaggerated.
