Conina said:
On it's last legs? Almost 50% of Nintendo's software revenue is still from physical software:
And if we exclude "download-only software" without choice between digital and physical, the physical versions are way above 50% software revenue. I like the option between digital and physical Switch games. Even if the physical versions are $10 more expensive, you save that money on expensive MicroSD Express cards. |
The issue is the margins are simply far better on digital for both Nintendo and 3rd parties.
It's not a win for Nintendo or a 3rd party that Wal-Mart or whatever gets a $10 cut out of every game nor are the physical packaging/shipping costs of games free.
That's why really none of the three (Sony, MS, or Nintendo) are willing to really stick their neck out for physical games. All the manufacturing side parties involved stand to make more money in a digital only world, so the end result being a rapid shift to digital only basically isn't that shocking.
Nintendo is making a few concessions here, but y'know you can't then really complain that for example that they're charging more for physical copies. If you want a physical copy and just cannot live without one, well then you can pay the extra $10 cost of the cartridge + shipping + packaging that comes with it I guess. In the long haul that basically is a death sentence to physical games, because a big part of why people were still open to physical is the cost was the same as digital.
If Nintendo is bailing out on that and saying "screw this, we're not subsidizing that cost anymore" then most consumers are just going to say "fine, I'll just get the digital version".
PS6/Next XBox are likely to be all digital with no disc drive period. Disc drives don't even make sense any longer because there's no disc drive that's anywhere near as fast as the internal storage for modern game systems. So that's another problem.
Nintendo is keeping a toe dipped in the physical market, but it's coming with a bunch of caveats that make it basically unappealing. So 3rd party games basically by and large will be Key Card games, so basically just a bunch of useless plastic, and Nintendo will give you cartridge games if you want, but you're going to be paying like $70-$80 a pop for those physical games because Nintendo is no longer going to subsidize the $10-ish cost of the cart + retail cut + packaging/shipping costs. That's more or less digging physical's grave without saying you're doing that outright.
