Ever since Sony’s announced they were going to stop making them in July, there’s been a lot of speculation about how other companies could deal with physical games and media. Would they follow suit and abandon the technology, given the improvements in internet speed and latency? Or would efforts from video game preservations and movements like Stop Killing Games pay-off, keeping physical games alive for the foreseeable future?
Well, in Nintendo’s case, it thankfully seems like they’re going with option B. Why? Because in an interview with Nintendo of Latin America vice president Bill van Zyll, he confirmed that physical games would remain a thing for the foreseeable future:
Historically, we’ve been very agnostic, right? We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily. We also have a platform that was just launched. We’re barely just over a year into NS2. It’s got both digital and physical – that capability. There’s no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well, so our position has been to be agnostic.
And it does make a lot of sense too. Remember, Nintendo is the exact type of company for whom physical games work perfectly for.
For starters, they’re often people’s introduction to gaming. True, there are folks that grew up with PlayStation or Xbox too. Plus, a decent number of kids that started with either mobile gaming or PC.
But a lot of them start out with Nintendo titles. And, do you know what’s especially infuriating for a newcomer?
Having to wait 30+ minutes before you can start a new video game due to all the required updates and digital downloads. Yeah, it really kills the vibe on Christmas morning when half the day is spent setting up the console rather than playing it. And while it’s definitely bad for longtime gamers too, at least they sorta know what the whole deal is. If you’re new to gaming or consoles on the other hand?
Yeah, this is one easy way to get turned off the whole medium. Or to end up back on TikTok/Instagram/YouTube/whatever other service you spend most of your life doomscrolling.
So, Nintendo likely benefit from physical games here. From people being able to actually play their new game in 5 minutes or so rather than spending half their day fighting to download necessary data.
Then there’s the whole internet connection thing. Digital games are only really practical if your internet speed is on the higher end.
Oh sure, it’s better than streaming might be. The games don’t require a consistent connection to run here.
But it’s still impractical for much of the world. Like, do you know how big the upcoming GTA 6 will be?
According to leaks, nearly 200GB.
Yeah, at about 300MBps, that’s approximately an hour and a half of downloading just to get the game’s files. Based on an average American internet connection.
Outside of America? Things don’t look so good. In plenty of places in Eastern Europe, that average goes up to about 4-5 hours. In developing countries, it could be anywhere up to 10 hours or more.
So, unless you want to write off much of the world outside of Western Europe, North America, Australia and parts of Asia, digital only games don’t really make a lot of sense. Heck, they don’t even make sense if you did; just because the average is around 300Mbps doesn’t mean that everyone in the country will get close to that in real life.
And given that they’re clearly increasing their efforts to market the Switch and Switch 2 in places like Latin America and the Middle East, there’s a definite incentive for Nintendo to not make their games or systems reliant on a fast internet connection.
Still, it’s good news for fans, good news for video game preservation, and good news for the company’s efforts to expand globally. Nintendo isn’t giving up on physical games, and has no plans to do so in future.
Source:
Nintendo Latin America says it won’t abandon physical media (My Nintendo News)