Even on the original Switch, large games were often downloads. Compilations generally just had one game on the carts. So it's not that surprising.

Yeah,  but are those new or manufactured like 10 years ago and still not being sold?

Most if not all of the smaller versions are simply old stocks that are still left on Amazon, not newly produced chips. 

It's only "illegal" if it's been tested in front of a court of law.

We are "trusting" Nintendo to do the right thing here and abide by the law.
However I am legally allowed to make modifications to my console, so if Nintendo bricks my console (Note: I haven't modded it, just stating hypotheticals), then Nintendo has broken the law.

Not over. Just on it's last legs.

I won't buy a console if it doesn't have Physical.

Is it actually a shrinking market though? Because the Switch has been Nintendo's biggest software pusher, setting all kinds of records for the company.

Except the Digital costs aren't cheaper for the consumer.
In-fact, games have been trending upwards in price.

And the tidbit? Many developers/publishers in recent years have been constantly breaking records on copies sold and making record profits, these companies aren't struggling financially where they need to ditch physical.

I don't think it makes sense to use Switch games as the reference here. Let's see how big the average story driven Switch 2 title is. Because if the Switch games are are 12-20GB, Switch 2 will likely average around the 30-40GB mark.

Yes, physical is on it's last legs I think that's fairly obvious. For the "I won't buy a console if it's not physical" then that probably means PS6 and XBox and Steam are all out and Switch 2 is going be a barely physical platform. The 3rd party games will be overwhelmingly Game Key Cards and the Nintendo published cartridge games you will it looks like be paying a $10 premium for (so hurray for $70+ games in that case). 

Game sales being good doesn't really change the dynamic that publishers need the best margins on their games today more than ever with game development costs being sky high. Losing $5-$10 margin on a copy of a game (probably more than that on Switch 2 since the cartridge while not super expensive is probably still another $7-$10 cost on its own) to have a retail version makes less and less sense when digital is becoming the standard anyway.

That's the other problem too is physical games even when they have some/all data on a disc or cartridge present a problem in that modern games are designed to be played off much faster mass storage. The PS5 internal storage is way faster than a Blu-Ray disc drive can be, so basically you're not really playing many games off the disc themselves, it's off the HDD making the disc just a glorified key card in a way. For Switch 2, getting faster cartridges to make the UFS 3.1 internal storage so you don't have a weird disparity where cartridge games take way longer to load (lol) also likely makes the cartridge itself more expensive. So that's a problem and it looks like Nintendo isn't willing to eat the cost of that per game. It's being passed on to the consumer as their physical games now have a $10 premium it looks like over digital.  

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. 

The issue with digital is no one knows what happens to your digital games once the services shut down.

If game companies effectively let you do whatever you want with your digital data after the generation ends, then I think more people would take up digital gaming.  Why can't I simply copy my data to a USB drive and then drag it across easily to a new/second hand console 20-30 years from now if my console dies and I buy a replacement from say ebay/amazon/marketplace? At the end of the generation of a console, they should release firmware that turns off all the DRM nonsense and let us use them like retro console however we wish. 

While digital is more profitable when you look only at an individual copy, it's actually more profitable to offer both digital and physical formats for games because the total volume of game sales increases tremendously. Like I said in my previous post, physical still accounted for ~70% of copies sold for games that are offered in both formats. It's something that you have ignored in your rush to defend anti-consumer third party decisions. The same logic of offering games in both formats obviously also applies to royalty fees. Physical vs. digital isn't a zero-sum game, because the removal of the physical format doesn't necessarily result in an additional sale for the digital version; it's actually quite common that the result is the loss of a sale.

So far there have been no credible news that physical games will cost $10 more than digital ones in the USA. A price hike on physical only exists in Europe, so why is that? It's because European retailers have regularly undercut the digital prices, so now their typical undercutting will make digital and physical games cost about the same. That's how things work in the real world.

The main reason why Switch 2 still offers physical games is obviously that the majority of Nintendo games sold on Switch 1 were on game cards. Only a stupid company would turn against their own customers.

The use of game-key cards will likely become less prevalent over time. Game-key games will have a hard time becoming million sellers regardless of the strength of their IP. We've already seen this happening with all the code-in-a-box and partial download games on Switch 1. Every few years the industry happens to bet on the wrong horse; the industry sure wants to force an all-digital future, but that doesn't mean that gamers will go along with it. Other such failed endeavors include killing of the used games market, forcing always online, replace handheld gaming with mobile gaming, and most of all, trying to end Nintendo's run as a console manufacturer.

Lastly, it's so laughable that you portray $70-80 for physical games as a downright terrible thing. You know why? Because the offered alternative of $70-80 for digital games is much worse.

It's not really though, there's no scenario in which having some split of physical games is some how more profitable. Gamers are simply going to be forced to buy games digitally or get out of the industry, and Sony/MS/Nintendo all know the crowd of people that talk about quitting gaming entirely if they don't get physical games is a tiny actual audience. People adjusted to digital only for movies and their music, it's inevitable that gaming will go the same way. 

If you only offer digital games, people will simply just shift to digital. 

I disagree that Game Key Cards will be less prevanlent over time. I think it's going to be at least 90% of the third party game market and that's not going to be any different 2 years from now, 3 years from now. "Oooh! Let me cut my margin down by $8 a copy so I can have a physical 64GB cartridge" is not appealing to a publisher. 

When PS6 is announced in a year or two and is a digital only platform with no disc drive period, that's basically going to be the nail in the coffin for physical games, all 3rd parties will basically bail out at that point. There's not going to be a situation where 3rd party Capcom or Activision or Square-Enix or EA or whoever who is now used to having digital only for PS6, XBox, and PC is going to be on Switch 2 suddenly like "you know what we need to do? Ditch these Key Cards so we can pay even more for cartridges again". Like yeah they need that like they need a hernia. 

Next 5-6 years is going to be a nightmare for dev studios just trying to handle skyrocketing dev costs as is.