Nintendo’s recent FY26 report had a lot of eye-opening statistics, but an interesting one shows that, despite the push to digital media, nearly 50% of game sales were still physical, giving hope to purveyors of tangible media.
The death of physical media has been prophesied for years. Fingers crossed it never happens, as it means saying goodbye to steelbooks, Collector’s Editions, and all other forms of gaming physical media. New Nintendo sales data suggests all is not lost, and your shelves won’t accumulate dust from a lack of game cases.
Physical Nintendo Switch Game Sales Going Strong
The February 3 financial earnings report had a big headline: Nintendo Switch 2 remains the company’s fastest-selling platform.
It’s a fairly emphatic statement about the console’s success, but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll see a note during the presentation about digital sales for the Switch and Switch 2:
“Digital sales through the third quarter increased by 14.7% year-on-year to 282.0 billion yen and accounted for 50.4% of total software sales for our dedicated video game platform, down 0.6 percentage points.”
On one hand, this indicates a strong digital presence; however, there’s a clear message here that pretty much half of Nintendo Switch media sold is still physical.
It’s also pointed out that “Digital sales increased year-on-year mainly due to an increase in sales of downloadable versions of packaged software and add-on content.”
Meaning, without somewhat inflated numbers as a direct result of digital-only downloads in DLC and expansions, the digital percentage might be lower, and physical sales might be above 50%.
Physical media isn’t going away anytime soon. We learned this last year with Cyberpunk 2077 selling more physical copies on Nintendo Switch 2 than digital.
Let IG know if you continue to buy physical game media, and if you’ll ever switch, through the Insider Gaming Discord Server.
Our news continues with The Division: Definitive Edition shadow dropping for $50 with zero improvements, and Xbox Game Pass February 2026 Wave 1 games being revealed.
Andy is Insider Gaming's Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
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