They don’t need to push “a majority” of current physical-preferring customers to digital, if the physical copy loses them 30% of the profit and 38% of sales for a game are physical, that means pushing half of new physical buyers over to digital and losing the other half of those customers entirely is slightly behind breaking even. That’s before assuming that a single dollar spent on used copies would have instead been spent on the eShop.
The only reason for Nintendo to not abandon these customers entirely is if they aren’t actually physical copy die-hards in the first place: they’re good little subscription paypiggies or totally fine with buying eShop exclusive games anyway. Their data currently leans in favor of tolerating the used market and lower margins on physical game sales. It will very likely shift, especially when it comes time to renew the agreements they’ve made with their manufacturing and shipping providers.
Nintendo’s doing what Sony did, testing the waters to see how many of their customers are willing to ditch physical for digital. They’re doing it by up-pricing physical first party games, while Sony did it by charging you an extra $100 (+33%) up front if you wanted to have the ability to play discs on your console. Sony is now acting on the customer data they have from their experiment, Nintendo will (as usual) be a generation behind. Right now, getting a physical copy for $60 vs a digital one for $60 is kind of a no brainer, unless you really don’t like swapping cartridges. As soon as customers start to ask themselves if having that cartridge is worth another $10, Nintendo will have the data they need.
They don’t need to push “a majority” of current physical-preferring customers to digital, if the physical copy loses them 30% of the profit and 38% of sales for a game are physical, that means pushing half of new physical buyers over to digital and losing the other half of those customers entirely is slightly behind breaking even. That’s before assuming that a single dollar spent on used copies would have instead been spent on the eShop.
The only reason for Nintendo to not abandon these customers entirely is if they aren’t actually physical copy die-hards in the first place: they’re good little subscription paypiggies or totally fine with buying eShop exclusive games anyway. Their data currently leans in favor of tolerating the used market and lower margins on physical game sales. It will very likely shift, especially when it comes time to renew the agreements they’ve made with their manufacturing and shipping providers.
Nintendo’s doing what Sony did, testing the waters to see how many of their customers are willing to ditch physical for digital. They’re doing it by up-pricing physical first party games, while Sony did it by charging you an extra $100 (+33%) up front if you wanted to have the ability to play discs on your console. Sony is now acting on the customer data they have from their experiment, Nintendo will (as usual) be a generation behind. Right now, getting a physical copy for $60 vs a digital one for $60 is kind of a no brainer, unless you really don’t like swapping cartridges. As soon as customers start to ask themselves if having that cartridge is worth another $10, Nintendo will have the data they need.