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Nintendo reports a full 38.5% of its sales are still physical in the wake of Sony abandoning discs
(www.gamesradar.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2026
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"Physical" lol. Aren't a lot of them just like activation keys now, and no game content on disk?
Not really... The majority are still physical, particularly first party games. I would say there are a lot of key card games but not the majority
Also even with key cards that means people are still opting to have the "inconvenience" of switching the cartridge to play the game over fully digital showing that they still care about having a physical item in their hand, even if it is a sham
You can also sell or trade the key cards, unlike fully digital purchases. This is basically what Xbox and Playstation have been doing the last couple generations with discs, Nintendo is just more up-front about how it works.
No the vast majority of games are on cart.
I said some. You said majority not. Ok? You're basically saying the same thing I am.
They just started doing that earlier this year for a handful of titles. I doubt there has been enough time for a significant number of titles to implement that.
The numbers reported are not even about "physical" vs. digital sales. As I understand it, is software sales conducted in the Nintendo Switch Store vs. software sales from other stores. So a customer buying an activation key in a box will count as a physical sale.
This is an important data point, since it shows that some customers would rather drive down to GameStop, buy a code in a box, drive home, and punch that code into the console rather than giving Nintendo their credit card (probably because they are buying the game for someone else). That means that stopping sales outside the console games store would alienate a ton of customers.
Some third-party games are Game Key Cards. Some are properly on the cartridge.