I don’t think that will ever happen. There’s always gonna be people who purchase physical copies of things. The digital route won’t ever work out because you just own the license and having to be connected online constantly will always be a downfall. I use to be on board with digital things but, it has way to many flaws. Every major company will probably just move forward with shipping physical things in the future as to it takes up to much store space is what I’ve come to conclusion with. People don’t really goto stores to make game purchases now a days like they use to when they can just hop online and have things shipped to them at home.
I agree with you there'll always be a need for physical copies when it comes to console gaming at least. While it's true console makers are pushing for an all-digital future, gamers are going to see soon enough what truly that kind of future is going to be. The issue for me is will digital games that I buy ever get delisted several console generations down the road and, more concerning, will each of the 3 console makers still be here a decade or two from now? If gamers truly believe that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft will never bow out of the gaming business and always have servers that will allow you to download that digital game a decade or decades from now then buy your games digitally. I personally don't have kind of trust.
I am an old-school gamer who want the full content of a game to be on the disk or cartridge I bought that I am really bothered by this trend that before you can play a game, a portion of the game or updates have to be downloaded in order for it to run. It has me concerned about how many of my physical games from the PS4 and Xbox One onwards can be truly playable far into the future if it's not already loaded onto my consoles.
