By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
RolStoppable said:

Putting all this information together means that digital versions of packaged games are nowhere near the 42% you posted.

If we look beyond your table into the current fiscal year, we have these numbers from Nintendo on page 12:

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2021/211104_4e.pdf

The flawed metric used by you shows a year over year decline of 2.1 percent points during the first half of the compared fiscal years, so your suggested trend has come to a halt for Nintendo.

The caveat with these numbers is that they are a lot more complete during FQ4 (=CQ1) than they are during FQ1 and FQ2 (=CQ2 and CQ3). Regardless, using some necessary estimates here we get roughly in the ballpark that digital ratios of packaged software are either not growing, or if they are, they aren't growing by much anymore. The biggest benefits for growing digital ratios in the recent past have been COVID-19 measures and too low physical stock (such as for Monster Hunter Rise in Japan), but it will take a long time until we see sustained 50%+ digital ratios on a Nintendo console and if we ever see them, it still won't mean the end of physical games. Considering how much at odds Nintendo is with the supposed trends and industry standards, and how successful they are the more they are out of line, how could you think that Nintendo will ever follow the rest of the gaming industry, let alone other industries.

That decline is a notable data point but it's basically a regression to the mean after the pandemic catapulted digital sales. The overall trend is still big growth so I don't think it'll take that long a time to reach over 50%, if it doesn't happen this decade it'll for sure happen next decade. I think they'll follow the rest of the industry on this aspect since the positives heavily outweigh any negatives for them so I expect the Switch 2 to be when digital starts to become dominant for Nintendo. The only thing I can see preventing this is if a large enough number of Nintendo fans are uniquely predisposed to physical to the extent they won't ever switch to digital.