Nintendo Reaffirms Its Commitment to Physical Games as Zelda: Ocarina of Time Sales Surge Online

Nintendo's upcoming release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is already attracting considerable attention ahead of its November 5 launch, with physical sales figures highlighting the demand for the remake. The strong interest also highlights how much value players continue to place on physical editions.

With only a few weeks remaining before release, excitement is building around one of Nintendo's most anticipated games, especially as the company prepares for a busy holiday season. The situation has also sparked comparisons with GTA 6, which will arrive a couple of weeks later. 

The growing interest in Ocarina of Time is particularly visible on Amazon, where the physical version is said to have reached around 100,000 purchases in the last month.

This is surprising, because the numbers on product pages are often much lower, with 5,000 or 10,000 purchases being more common. Seeing a figure as high as 100,000 suggests that plenty of players want to get their hands on the remake before it launches. Amazon also prices the physical version a little lower, giving customers yet another reason to consider buying from the retailer.

Nintendo is also releasing a special launch edition with a shiny front cover, giving a little bonus to players that enjoy collecting physical games. It’s a nice way to celebrate the remake, especially for fans who want something a bit more tangible than a digital purchase. The physical version can have added appeal to collectors who enjoy having their games on shelves, especially if a release comes with a special presentation. 

Of course, while we can set aside the inevitable comparisons to GTA 6, those comparisons still don't give the clearest idea of how these games will perform. Demand for GTA 6 is expected to be huge, with first- week sales potentially hitting astronomical numbers. But physical sales aren’t the only thing to think about when talking about them, especially if some boxed editions include download codes instead of the full game on a disk. 

Nintendo recently addressed its position on physical games during a public-facing event, according to comments shared by Go Nintendo. “We’ve not been favoring one format over the other historically,” said Bill Van Zyll, Nintendo’s vice president and general manager for Latin America. Rather, Nintendo takes consumer preference into account when it decides how to distribute its games. He also pointed out that the Switch 2 offers both digital and physical games, emphasizing that the company has no plans to abandon physical media.

Of course, these comments came from a regional Nintendo executive, not the president of the company, so the statement shouldn’t be taken as a blanket statement about all of Nintendo’s future plans.

Still, the statement offers a useful indication of how the company approaches physical distribution. Nintendo has long benefited from having its games available in retail stores alongside its hardware, allowing customers to purchase a console and a physical game during the same visit.

The current approach Nintendo is also taking acknowledges that there are different costs for both digital and physical games. It takes more materials and production work to make cartridges. Estimates are that cartridges cost companies between $10 and $15 in some cases. Those expenses help explain why physical games can carry a higher price than digital versions. 

That price difference gives customers a choice based on what matters most to them. Some gamers are fine with buying digital games, as they can access their library without having to store physical cases or cartridges. Some prefer to spend a little more so that they can obtain the whole game on a cartridge instead of a Game-Key Card that requires a download. 

If Sony were to raise the price of physical games rather than just killing the format entirely, it might end up in a similar situation. Some customers would surely balk at paying more, but others might accept the difference, so long as they could still buy a full game on a disk at launch. 

But for collectors and players who want to keep their games forever and not have to rely on digital stores, the physical case and disk could make the extra cost worth it. Some consumers might even be willing to pay a larger price difference if it meant physical releases were still possible.

The bigger worry is that physical games are getting harder to maintain as file sizes grow.

Nintendo now offers GameCube cards in addition to traditional cartridges, including cartridges that can hold up to 64 GB. As third-party games continue to grow, it may become harder for developers to fit certain releases onto the existing cartridge formats without further compromise. Moving to 128 GB cartridges could also drive up manufacturing costs, potentially making physical games even pricier.

So it looks like Nintendo will stick with physical games for the Switch 2 generation, for now. This is a perfectly logical move on the part of the company, as long as players continue to buy boxed releases, especially when big titles like Ocarina of Time continue to attract interest. The upcoming Nintendo Switch 3 console, currently unofficially called Switch 3, could also retain some form of physical game support.

Meanwhile, Nintendo has also faced questions about whether GTA 6 could eventually arrive on the Switch 2. During an interview with Variety, Devon Pritchard, president of Nintendo of America, answered questions about the possibility of Rockstar's upcoming game appearing on the console.

Variety suggested that the Switch 2 had enough processing power to run GTA 6, although that assessment remains speculative because there is no confirmed version of the game for Nintendo's hardware. Without official technical details, it is difficult to determine what kind of resolution, frame rate, or graphical settings a potential port could offer.

Even the game's performance on other platforms remains a subject of interest, including whether it will receive specific enhancements for the PS5 Pro. That makes it even harder to predict how a version designed for the Switch 2 might compare with releases on more powerful hardware.

There is a possibility that Rockstar and Take-Two will find a way to release the game on Nintendo’s console, but there is no announcement at this time. Pritchard made that clear, saying that any talk of GTA 6 will have to include Take-Two and Rockstar. “I’ve got nothing to announce at this time,” she said.

A Switch 2 edition of GTA 6 would certainly be an interesting holiday lineup for Nintendo, particularly if it launched around the Ocarina of Time remake.

Having both versions on the same console could also tap into different audiences, with one appealing to longtime Nintendo fans and the other attracting players who are fans of Rockstar’s open-world series. But Nintendo isn’t necessarily relying on GTA 6 to keep its hardware sales strong this holiday season. 

The availability of hardware may also influence the holiday market. Microsoft may be putting fewer Xbox consoles on the market, while Sony has supply constraints that may make it difficult to ramp up production. The RAM shortage is still a thing, and that may mean some tough choices for manufacturers about how to allocate the components they do have. 

Nintendo, meanwhile, has an opportunity to accelerate Switch 2 adoption during the early years of the console's life cycle. Building a larger audience now would help the company benefit from its first-party releases later in the generation, when a stronger installed base could translate into more software sales.

GTA 6 would be a welcome addition if it eventually came to the platform, but Nintendo already has its releases to support that strategy. For now, the company is maintaining its commitment to physical games while preparing for a holiday season that could bring strong demand for the Switch 2.