Why do Disk Drives matter?

[RolStoppable]

Norion said:

Nintendo will definitely keep physical for the longest but the notion that they won't ever develop into digital only is unrealistic. Even if it takes a while Nintendo will reach the state Playstation is currently at with it and eventually where Xbox is at with it and at some point the amount of customers who are physical die-hards will be small enough to where it won't be worth catering to them.

Just compare the state of digital gaming even just a decade ago to now and it's clear that things will be very different in 20 years or so. I don't think this is a positive shift since physical is a good option to have but digital is increasingly where the money is at for video games so it's where companies like Nintendo will go.

Your logic isn't sound, because if you swapped in microtransactions - which make more money for Sony and Microsoft than software sales - for physical vs. digital, it all breaks down. Where PS and Xbox ended up is not necessarily Nintendo's destination.

It's one thing to say that digital will grow, but it's a whole nother to come to the conclusion that eventually there will be only digital. You have to remember that printruns for non-special/non-limited editions of video games have come in at the low tenthousands for decades, so the thought that Nintendo will eventually be unable to sell 100k or more physical copies of their popular IPs is plain nuts.

I think - or rather hope - that the one thing we can all agree on is that Nintendo will do whatever brings in money and is in line with the principle of not doing any long term damage to their brand reputation as a console manufacturer; this is why microtransactions are off the table for Nintendo. This will also be why there will always be physical Nintendo games, because it would be too damaging to stop printing games.