The physical games at present time are a buggy mess without day one patch anyway. There are a few exeptations.
Yes.
And thats because?
You all decided, that downloading a patch on day one is fine, so publishers extended development cycles well after the point they did in the past. And nowadays also just release unfinished stuff - because, you always could patch later, if people bought it (and it didn't flop) - and found its a broken mess (No Mans Sky).
Thats largely not the point though. The point is, that consumers loose pretty much every ownership right (culture for the most part), once physical copies vanish entirely.
So day one patches are 'ok' - as long as there is still the 'concept of ownership' - and you only get that with the physical good in play.
Because you cant have physical copies without property rights - that then also makes stuff like "art" possible (You give art away to be art. It has to become part of the public realm.).
If you are in the business to produce entertainment instead - you never let your product go.
Think of it like licensing a gamesbrand. But now apply the same logic to the game itself.
So think of it as it becoming normal, that 'your favorite game' will be unavailable - unable to be recreated, unable to be reused in a derivative fashion, stored away in a corporate rights silo, that then becomes part of that businesses economic evaluation - and never being more than that. If you are lucky, you might get a toy figurine as a token of rememberence, or something.
(Thanks Nintendo.
) Like in Disneyland.
As 'enhanced by cloud' (wooow!) comes along, servers will always be down one day after the profitability curve demands it.
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Now the issue is - Gamers.
Because you can always convince the idiots, that believe in popularity as a measure of something being good, that it is in their interest, because it is so easy.
But the key is, that you can convince that bunch of people always to be entertained by whats popular anyhow - so those are never the people that would care about libraries, culture or conservation.
Now you can look at all digital first distrubution platforms (play store, apples iphone gaming model ..), recognize, that they are all pretty messy - and think that this is by chance. But you can also look at that and see it as what always has to happen, once you take ownership away from consumers. (Everyone looses interest as soon as hype is over, and everyone still tries to flog their games corpses five years after, in the most low effort way possible - because there still could be 20 USD in it.)
That (Entertainment model) is kind of not conducive to culture.
Culture is what you get, when people start recording shows off of TV (when the first VCR arrives).
Now gaming culture isnt the best thing since sliced bread. But at least its around, and at least its ours.
If its only 'theirs' - you will lose interest. And it will start to look bad - over time. Promised.
CDs/DVDs or not is not the point. Thats mainly just 'people like what they grew up with'. If its cartridges, or discs never matters.
The issue is, that every company thats in the digital space will never sign away the ability to still profit from long tail (old, old) stuff, if they dont have to. And as a result you will end up with corporate content silos where you will always ask if you can pay them to look at it.
And they will always tell you - sure, if you sign this, this and this - and we can be bothered. (GTA4 - gone,...)
Same with gog.com or steam. Those only make sense as a competition model to physical media (steam seasonal sales f.e.). Thats not how digital first ('there only is a digital good of the thing') ecosystems look like.
So we dont have to have the conversation around 'whats best'? Because both (digital download and physical copy) is best. Obviously. But if you get into - no, whats really best - and digital download wins - its properties will change. Piece by piece to be worse, than it is now.
For all I care you could buy all digital if you'd like to, but make a fuss at the release of every new console, that you will never buy it, if it doesnt also deliver you games as something you can also own. Would be totally fine with me.
(And with digital goods, sadly you have to read the fine print.)
The problem is, that publisher will notice - and once physical media demand falls under a certain threshhold, its content subscriptions and 'the scifi space attraction ride has opened - hype' all the way.
(They will control the environment, use - the entire market (no used games).They will take content away when its no longer profitable, they will lose interest if relicensing of music in a game isnt profitable, ... They will produce a poor kid Kenny (Southpark) consumption tier as an entry level, and thats it.
Remake 20 years later, to profit from nostalgia (thats multiple resale value). But maybe dont put that much effort in it, its not as if people could just as well play a rom of it...
