Nintendo Executive Confirms Company Has “No Plans to Ditch Physical Spil

By Jake Campbell•12 October 2026

✓ Fact-Checked & Verified

Bill van Zyll, vice president and general manager for Nintendo in Latin America, has reiterated the company’s stance on physical media, confirming that it has no immediate plans to move toward an “all-digital” future.

In an interview with YouTuber Coelho no Japão, van Zyll acknowledged the interest fans have in physical games—reignited recently by Sony’s controversial decision to announce PlayStation will be discless by 2028—and said Nintendo would continue to invest in physical media for the foreseeable future.

“Historically, we’ve been very agnostic, right?” says van Zyll in the interview. “We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily. 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.”

When referring to being “agnostic,” van Zyll is pointing to the fact that the Switch 2 ecosystem revolves around both digital versions of games—primarily purchased via the Nintendo-run eShop—and physical game cartridges. These cartridges either contain full games or act as “licenses” that allow players to access digital games when inserted.

The Switch 2 has launched just over a year ago, and its platform supports both formats natively.

Physical game key-cards have not been immune from controversy themselves, however. There is often consumer push-back when it turns out the physical version of a game is “just a key card.”

Sony’s decision to kill off disc-based games has been met with furore, but recently there have been signs that the company may be considering changing its mind about the move. Udviklers like Hideo Kojima have given their views on the proposition, and even CD Projekt Red has said it would be powerless to do anything about physical media if Sony decides to stop supporting it.

Nintendo’s public support for the continued existence of games as physical media stands in contrast to that landscape.