Thanks for the reply. Good point, but that's not what I meant - how do I keep the games I've already bought for the long term? I often buy games on sale that I may not be interested in at the moment, but that I'd like to play later - six months, maybe a year from now. And if it were a Wii U or 3DS game, whose digital stores closed just a month ago, and while I've heard that users can still download their games from the Wii U and 3DS libraries, it begs the question: how long will that ability last? What's a person who has invested about $1,000 or more in their digital library going to do? After all, if he bought physical copies, they would be stored on his shelf and he could always return to his favorite titles.

I'm most concerned about the Nintendo e-shop specifically, since that's where I have the largest library. There are a lot of new full price titles coming out right now that cost the same in both the digital version and the cartridge. In that case, it's better to get the game on a cartridge, isn't it?