I’ve taken a lot of shots at Nintendo over the years, often times under various versions of headlines that start with “Nintendo Hates You“. And those shots were well earned, given the company’s apparent policy of being as anti-fan as it possibly can be on all matters related to intellectual property. Nintendo never misses an opportunity to choose IP protectionism over embracing fan culture and the creativity of its own customers and evangelists.
But once we get away from matters of IP, Nintendo can actually be quite attentive to its fan-base. Everything about the UX for its platforms, consoles, and first-party titles show genuine care for what Nintendo fans want and like. It’s how this company has managed to remain so successful after all of these years. And that apparently extends to the latest console-war battleground, which is physical media. And on physical media, Nintendo appears to put a ton of weight on what a portion of its fans want as it plans to continue the use of physical media into the future.
Vice President and General Manager for Nintendo in Latin America Bill van Zyll spoke on the topic during a recent interview with YouTuber Coelho conducted during the Brazil Game Show. The Nintendo-focused YouTube channel asked about a number of topics related to Nintendo’s activities in the region, including localized Nintendo Directs. That’s when the question of physical games inevitably came up. Van Zyll was keen to emphasize the benefits of the format while assuring the company’s continued plans to produce physical games.
“Historically, we haven’t had a preference for a specific format,” he explains. “We take consumer preferences very much into consideration. We also have a platform that was just launched. We’ve been around for a little over a year with the Nintendo Switch 2, and it offers both digital and physical games. Therefore, we have no plans to abandon physical media. We know how much fans enjoy it.”
As Kotaku notes, consumer demographics are certainly playing a roll here. Nintendo gamers prioritize physical media games more than other console users. But in an industry that is quickly building a reputation for casting aside customer sentiment in favor of doing whatever the Copilot-created spreadsheet tells them they should do, seeing a gaming company actually take its own customers into account in this way is a good thing.
Nintendo’s heavier reliance on physical sales makes any argument for a shift towards digital sales exclusively far weaker, making the choice to continue supporting physical sales an expected response from the company. Still, as Sony continues conversations with a number of companies over their decision, it is at least reassuring for Nintendo fans that the company has no plans to follow Sony’s lead. At least for now.
There is a big enough percentage of the gaming public that likes to buy something physical, for all kinds of reasons. Ownership rights are far more robust that way (for now). Preservationists need physical media to truly do their preservation work. Treating these games and the media packaged with it as collectables is absolutely a thing.
So, those of you who want physical media games? Nintendo loves you is the only appropriate headline. I just wish that posture could infect all the other areas in which Nintendo has long treated its fans poorly.
