By now, everyone must have heard that Sony has decided to phase out physical games effective January 2028. If you buy a game in a store after that, you'll only receive a download code, which is then one-time use and grants you digital access. We can therefore assume that the PlayStation 6 won't have any kind of disc drive, and few people believe Microsoft will act any differently.
But what about Nintendo? How are they expected to act? Mat Piscatella, senior analyst at Circana, has now commented on this in an interview with VGC, and we think many of you will approve of his stance:
"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.
"Retail has already leaned into Nintendo support more and more over the past few years (Nintendo also holds very strong share of physical software and hardware sales since the launch of Switch 2 in particular), so this could continue to increase, sure."
In short, it sounds like Nintendo will continue to release its games on physical media. Game Key Cards (cartridges that don't contain any games, but simply act as a key that lets you download titles) have been heavily criticised, but Nintendo itself rarely uses them, and compared to codes in cases, they're infinitely better because they still make it possible to resell the games.