Today, Nintendo announced a change to how Nintendo Switch 2 games will be priced going forward, or at least how the Switch 2 games that Nintendo publishes will be priced. In a short statement published to its website titled "About Nintendo Switch 2 Game Pricing," Nintendo reveals that beginning in May 2026 and starting with pre-orders for the upcoming Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, "digital titles exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2 will have an MSRP that is different from physical versions."
Nintendo goes on to explain that these games "offer the same experiences whether in packaged or digital format, and this change simply reflects the different costs associated with producing and distributing each format and offers players more choice in how they can buy and play Nintendo games."
Pre-orders for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book are now live, and it's a clear $10 split between the digital and physical versions. To grab the digital version, you only need to fork over $59.99 USD, while the physical version, which you could also pre-order directly from the Nintendo store online, is $69.99.
We can expect the rest of Nintendo's portfolio of Switch 2 exclusive titles (that it also published) to follow suit this coming May. The company does, however, point out that retailers are capable of setting their own prices for physical games, so don't expect prices to always exactly match what Nintendo has on its own store.
Having the digital versions be cheaper than their physical counterparts makes sense when looking at the facts of the matter. Those physical boxes (which are depressingly empty compared to how they were dressed up across gaming's history all the way up to the mid 2010s) cost money, and the cartridges the games are on (or not on if it's a Game-Key Card) have a cost that makes them marginally more expensive to make.
When Nintendo publishes a game, it eats all of those costs, and it's clear that it would rather incentivize you away from a physical library of games in every way it can. Whether that's with the much-disliked Game-Key Cards, or with its latest change, simply making it cheaper to buy the digital version.
Nintendo's hand may also have been forced by the current worldwide economic and manufacturing challenges. With the price of the Nintendo Switch 2 inevitably going up in the future, lowering the price of its digital games is a way to soften the blow, according to a former sales lead.
It's the latest blow to the physical games market, and anyone who enjoys collecting games physically. It's also the next step towards a day when Nintendo releases a major, first-party title that does not come with a physical version at all. There have been smaller examples of this, but we've yet to see a mainline Mario game, for example, release without a physical version.
After all, Nintendo would not be breaking its own rule that its first-party Mario and Zelda games would not be Game-Key Cards in their physical versions if they simply didn't have physical versions.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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