‘Cyberpunk: 2077’ Nintendo Switch 2 Sales Numbers Shows Players Still Prefer Physical Media Over Digital
To the surprise of absolutely no one save maybe a number of disconnected corporate strategists, CD Projekt Red has confirmed that when it came to ‘which format sold more’, the physical Nintendo Switch 2 release of Cyberpunk 2077 blew its digital counterpart out of the water.
This detail regarding the game’s Switch 2 sales split was provided to the public courtesy of CD Projekt Red themselves, who released the information as part of their H1 2025 earnings presentation, as hosted on August 28th.
Therein, amidst a visual breakdown of the studio’s current financials, its joint CEO Michał Nowakowski presented investors with a massive graphic detailing the channel split – or the difference in sales between different ‘channels’ of release – for the Nintendo Switch 2 port of Cyberpunk 2077.
According to their numbers, the portable release made up 75% of all the game’s sales in the first month following its June 5th release, while the digital download version amounted to just 25%.
In other words, the physical edition sold approximately 50% more than its intangible counterpart – a non-insignificant gap to say the least.
Of course, while said gap is admittedly stark, it’s not all together unsurprising.
As was the case in console generations past, when a player bought a physical edition of a game, they would be able to play it straight-out-of-the-box, no downloads or internet connection required.
Sure, some games may have asked players to download an update or extra DLC to get the ‘complete experience’, but the disc or cartridge itself would still allow a consumer to play the full title they had purchased.
However, in the case of the Nintendo Switch 2, physical releases are all but complete.
Instead, the console’s proprietary Game-Key Cards serve as a sort of ‘real-world Digital Rights Management (DRM)’ tool, which when initially inserted grants players a digital download of the given game – and in making it more annoying than just buying the digital version, the need for a download to verify itself against the few bits of code actually included on the Game-Key Card requires means the game can only be accessed when its cartridge is present inside the console.
A nightmare for anyone who may find themselves without an internet connection – like active travelers, deployed military servicemen, or individuals who happen to live in particularly rural areas – there thankfully exists a small handful of titles whose developers sought to include their full software on their Game-Key Cards.
And we mean ‘small’; Of the 149 total games either released or officially announced for the Nintendo Switch 2, only three whose physical releases can be played from start-to-finish right off the shelf: The Western release of Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion, the upcoming Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, and – you guessed it – Cyberpunk 2077.
Combine this respect for players with the Nintendo Switch 2’s overall lack of fully-on-card offerings, as well as the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 has already been available for five years on practically every other non-Nintendo platform, and it’s not hard to see just why more players opted to pick up a physical copy of its latest port rather than a digital one – especially in an age where corporations can censor or even revoke one’s access to their purchases with the flip of a switch.
