With a rumored remake potentially on the way, this question comes up a lot in our inbox — see our mailbag post for more of that — so here's the honest breakdown rather than a one-line answer.
The case for physical
A physical cartridge is a self-contained object you actually own — it doesn't depend on a storefront staying online, an account staying active, or a license agreement staying in effect. For collectors specifically, physical copies are also the version that special or collector's editions are typically built around, and the ones that carry resale or trade-in value years later. If box art, manuals, or steelbooks matter to you at all, physical is really the only version of this conversation.
The case for digital
No cartridge to lose or scratch, no shelf space, and typically faster access at launch since there's no unboxing step between purchase and playing. Digital also sidesteps physical scarcity entirely — no worrying about a special edition selling out at a specific retailer, since a digital purchase isn't tied to physical stock.
The tradeoff that matters most long-term
Digital licenses are generally tied to your account and the platform's storefront staying operational and supported — which has, historically, not always held indefinitely across console generations. A physical cartridge doesn't have that dependency in the same way, though it depends on the hardware itself remaining playable, which is its own long-term consideration.
Where a special edition changes the calculation
If the rumored hardware we've been tracking does ship with some kind of bundled or pack-in software, that's specifically a physical-adjacent purchase decision — you're buying the hardware for the hardware, and the game attached to it is closer to a bonus than a separate choice. Worth keeping in mind if you're trying to decide now versus waiting to see how any bundle actually shakes out.
Our take, for what it's worth: if collecting is even part of why you're interested in a special edition at all, physical is generally the more collector-aligned choice — that's an opinion, not a rule, and plenty of people reasonably land elsewhere.
For the games already out now, our products directory lists both the physical and digital options for the existing BOTW and TOTK Switch 2 editions.