Although it remains a far-fetched scenario, the industry’s continued trend towards a universal gaming experience could leave Nintendo at a crossroads in the future.
Just under a decade ago, it truly appeared as if video game consoles had never been stronger in their history.
Sony was continuing to bring in impressive sales numbers for the blockbuster PlayStation 4, Nintendo had just released what is now their best-selling console ever in the Switch while Microsoft was remaining afloat with solid but not otherworldly sales metrics for the Xbox One.
Each of three consoles had appeared to occupy its own lane within the gaming world as well – the Switch helped Nintendo fully regain the family demographic while making significant gains among indie gamers, while Sony and Microsoft maintained their loyal fanbases among different sects of hardcore gamers.
Fast-forward from 2017 to 2026, and things in the video game industry have drastically changed – and there’s likely quite a bit of difference in opinion on whether this was all for the better or not.
The one change that has perhaps been universal is the continued drive away from physical copies of video games. While digital copies have been offered on systems dating back to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the seventh generation, the method became far more commonplace for players on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 – enough to where the developers responded to the change in demand.
Upon the 2020 release of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, Sony and Microsoft explicitly acknowledged the shift in how people buy games. The PlayStation 5 was (and still is) offered at a slightly lower price to acquire a digital-only console, while Microsoft’s scaled-down Xbox Series S serves as the digital-only version of the Series X.
As a physical media collector, I had seen the writing on the wall with this trend dating back to when digital games were first offered. The convenience of buying just about anything without leaving your couch echoes the convenience of being able to stream just about any song in the world without having to go to the store and buy the CD or record that contained whatever you are listening to in the moment.
Yet much is sacrificed with that instant convenience, and it’s a phenomenon that can’t be avoided regardless of your system of preference and whether you bought the physical copy of a game or not.
Across the board from the three major console developers, physical games have served as nothing more than a download key for hordes of titles released over the course of this decade – making the operation of the game good for only as long as the software and console itself support its download and updating.
In other words, you’re paying either the same price or a higher price for a product that has an unknown expiration date on it – you don’t know when you won’t be able to use it anymore, but you have a pretty damn good idea it won’t be forever.
This has led to some stark changes that appear to be on the horizon in the video game industry. Sony announced that physical copies for new games will no longer be produced beginning in January 2028, while Microsoft appears to be sunsetting the Xbox era as we know it with a new PC-Xbox hybrid console in development – one that is likely to be closer to the pricepoint of a top gaming PC than it would be a typical video game console.
Microsoft has long tried to homogenize the PC and Xbox gaming experiences with features like Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming and Xbox Game Pass, but the new era seems to be a broader homogenization of gaming in general – with the release of the next Halo title being available on the PlayStation 5 serving as evidence that Microsoft is giving up whatever exclusivity they had left.
Still, these dilemmas leave Nintendo largely unaffected for now. In just over a year since its release, the Switch 2 has already sold just under 20 million units, already approaching what the GameCube sold in its roughly six years of life from 2001 to 2007. The similarity between Xbox, PlayStation and PC gaming today has allowed Nintendo to fully seize the children and family sect of gamers, carving out unique experiences that still can only be played on a console.
But how long will that last?
Homogenization of media is nothing new – in fact it’s really the factor that is most responsible for Sony continuing to have the best-selling video game console of all-time in the PlayStation 2. Released in October 2000 at a time when DVDs and DVD players were still prohibitively expensive for many families, the PS2 offered the best of both worlds: pay the price of what a DVD player roughly cost at the time to get a video game console and DVD player all-in-one.
It began what has been a continued era of the video game console having the capability to serve as a home entertainment hub – expanding its use beyond just a toy for gamers into something that the entire family could use for hours on a daily basis.
Today, most media viewing within the home comes with a streamlined, all-in-one experience. Your live TV, internet connectivity, streaming apps and sometimes video games are all coming from the same exact place – a trend that seems to be continuing as Microsoft looks to remake the PC and video game console as its own machine.
Yet at least right now, it’s hard to see Nintendo diving into the mix to make their games available on Steam. A significant part of the charm of Nintendo games is playing them on their intended consoles with its intended control scheme, something that the company has continued to flood with unique elements to make whatever you experience on the Switch 2 be something that can’t be played or seen with the PC.
At this point, however, Nintendo appears to be fully reliant on kids who look forward to receiving video game consoles as birthday and Christmas gifts, with just about all of Nintendo’s unique appeal being centered on its routinely strong first-party titles.
This does relinquish a bit of a strength Nintendo had with the original Switch, which served as a hub for indie developers that offered countless digital-only games that likely would never be seen anywhere else. With many of these overlooked indie titles also available or exclusively available on Steam now, the PC mostly appears to have regained the market for indie gamers and developers.
The Switch 2 is already a smashing success and will continue to be, with a flagship Super Mario title eventually waiting in the wings to help boost sales. But on the other side of this generation, Nintendo simply cannot afford another Wii U – with the flop of another console likely necessitating Nintendo to explore new options in a future era.
Nintendo is the company that brought video game consoles into homes across the world with the Famicom and NES in the 1980’s, and they will almost certainly be the last major company to continue producing home consoles.
With games going digital and hardcore gamers likely opting to spend an extra few hundred bucks to get a gaming PC with everything available, Nintendo’s niche serves as the last stronghold for consoles in the world of video games.
Though this may just be an imagined scenario that never comes to fruition, it isn’t as far-fetched as it first may seem to imagine a day where Nintendo controllers and games are available on the computer.
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