{"id":85309,"date":"2026-07-02T10:30:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=85309"},"modified":"2026-07-02T11:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:36:26","slug":"nintendo-could-inherit-the-physical-gaming-crown-by-default","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=85309","title":{"rendered":"Nintendo Could Inherit The Physical Gaming Crown By Default"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sony plans to sell <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/sony-confirms-playstation-disc-production-will-end-in-2028\/\">PlayStation games exclusively as digital products<\/a> starting in 2028, and it&#8217;s rumored that Microsoft will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/next-gen-xbox-may-not-have-disc-drive-disc-to-digital-feature-coming-reports-say\/\" id=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/next-gen-xbox-may-not-have-disc-drive-disc-to-digital-feature-coming-reports-say\/\">also adopt a digital-only approach<\/a> with its next-gen Xbox <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/next-xbox-release-date-specs-display-price\/1100-6525379\/\">Project Helix<\/a>, a move that could leave Nintendo as the only console manufacturer that will still release games physically&#8211;at least for this current gaming generation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.videogameschronicle.com\/news\/playstation-ditching-physical-games-unlikely-to-influence-nintendos-plans-says-analyst\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">VGC<\/a>, Circana senior director and video game industry advisor Mat Piscatella commented on how he believes that both the PS6 and Project Helix will be digital-only gaming consoles. The upside to this is that, thanks to Nintendo operating in its own bubble, it doesn&#8217;t look like it&#8217;ll be ditching cartridges in response to Sony and Microsoft&#8217;s plans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;My gut says Nintendo does what Nintendo wants to do, and I don&#8217;t see them changing anything in their plans based on what Sony or Microsoft do on anything, really,&#8221;\u00a0Piscatella explained. &#8220;Nintendo is going to be Nintendo, for better and\/or worse. Retail has already leaned into Nintendo support more and more over the past few years&#8211;Nintendo also holds a very strong share of physical software and hardware sales since the launch of Switch 2 in particular&#8211;so this could continue to increase, sure.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendo.co.jp\/ir\/pdf\/2026\/260508_4e.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">FY25\/26 end-of-year report<\/a>,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sony plans to sell PlayStation games exclusively as digital products starting in 2028, and it&#8217;s rumored that Microsoft will also adopt a digital-only approach with its next-gen Xbox Project Helix, a move that could leave Nintendo as the only console manufacturer that will still release games physically&#8211;at least for this current gaming generation. Speaking to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":85311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85309"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85312,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85309\/revisions\/85312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/85311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}