As we start the true countdown to the Nintendo Switch 2, or whatever the true name of the console shall be, you’re going to find that people will go to any length to try and get even the smallest piece of information about it. Or, they’ll go the opposite route and spread all sorts of rumors about the system or the games that could appear on it to “drum up hype.” Thankfully, today, we have something on the former side of the spectrum. As people dug deeper into the financial briefing that The Big dropped last week, they got confirmation about the types of media that will be played on the system.
Specifically, they found that President Shuntaro Furukawa noted that the Switch 2 will continue the company’s trend of having physical versions of the game to sell versus just the digital copies on the eShop:
“Our objective is not to simply increase the share of digital sales but to maximize overall game software sales, including sales of physical software. This policy will remain unchanged going forward.”
While it is a small detail, it is one that matters in many ways. First and foremost, this reaffirms that Nintendo isn’t going the “digital-only route” like certain others are trying to, even with the success they’ve had in recent times with digital titles.
You might have noticed that companies like Microsoft have released special diskless versions of their Xbox consoles to cater to the digital-only crowd. The Big N doesn’t seem interested in that, and it’s not a big surprise why.
While it’s true that digital sales are growing across the world, which is part of the reason why Nintendo doesn’t drop the digital sales during its financial briefings, there are many who still prefer the “hard copies” of the games.
The basic logic behind that is that if they have the physical discs, or in the Switch’s case, cartridges, they know they ALWAYS have the game with them. In contrast, should something happen to their data on their Switch or other system, they might lose everything and have to pay for the game all over again.
It’s honestly a bit hard to tell how much of the gamer community would support a digital-only system. We’ve only had a few that tried that, and thus, the results are hard to interpret. Thankfully, for now, we don’t have to worry about that with the Switch 2, and we can focus on trying to find out more about it in the coming months.
