Nintendo will continue to support physical game releases, according to Bill van Zyll, the company's vice president and general manager for Latin America. In a recent interview, van Zyll stated that Nintendo considers consumer preference a major factor in its decisions and has no plans to abandon physical media.
"We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily," van Zyll explained. "We also have a platform that was just launched. We’re barely just over a year into NS2. It’s got both digital and physical – that capability. There’s no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well, so our position has been to be agnostic."
This statement indicates that the Nintendo Switch 2 will continue to offer both digital purchases through the eShop and physical game cartridges. However, the functionality of these modern physical cartridges differs from traditional ones. Many Switch 2 cartridges act as a key to authenticate a purchase, requiring the user to download the full game from the Nintendo eShop.
This system raises concerns similar to those surrounding digital-only ownership. If Nintendo were to shut down its servers, games associated with these key cards could become unplayable, even if the user possesses the physical media. While some developers, like Naoki Hamaguchi, director of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, may favor this approach to avoid limitations of cartridge storage size, players have voiced concerns about the long-term accessibility of their games.