You can still play sports games (via disc) even when they are already years old. Say you wanted to get Madden 19 for whatever reason and bought a copy at Gamestop. You just won't get anymore updated rosters or game updates or won't be able to play online.

Physical game discs aren't automatically coasters once the game gets old.

I think you're mainly talking about multiplayer. I'm talking about single player only. Not only do I see them having a longer life digitally, I can easily see them leaving the game available to those only with physical copies as well but the good news is that if they are leaving it for owners of the physical, there really is no reason why they would remove it for digital only owners.

I just don't ever see a time coming where I throw in a resident evil game disc and see a message that says "You can no longer play this game as it has been discontinued and files are no longer available for download".

I really do think they would leave the last updated files behind no matter the size.

Lastly, nobody here is taking into account that a large portion of gamers love having the physical copy. I don't even consider myself a gamer, I just love the art. Even as a casual player, I still want the steel case versions of the game and other extras.....there are a lot of people like me out there.

I still have my Diablo and Starcraft Battle Chest boxes at my parents house. Those things were great.

Have you played NBA 2k? The vast majority of features are shut down within two years.

Thing is, with almost all other media, the physical version is of superior quality.
Vinyl and CDs (played on the right systems) are almost always better sounding than streaming.
Blu-ray and 4K discs look and sound far better than their streaming counterparts.

Physical games, however, look, play and perform exactly like their downloaded versions.
And it used to be that a game would at least play off of the disc, saving you hard-drive space, but now, it all just copies onto your hard-drive anyway, so that doesn't' matter. Further, the cool booklets and packaging have slowly disappeared as well. First the instructions went black&white, then just a little pamphlet, then nothing. So you're not even getting anything in the physical package like you do with, say, a vinyl record.

They do have their "special edition" packages, but those have ballooned prices, and you get practically nothing for the extra charge.

You're talking about online features though like DLC, new rosters, playing with people online and game updates. Yeah, I'm aware they eventually shut down the servers for old games. But, you can still play standalone games.

I'm talking Myplayer which is a huge component of the game (as well as myteam, etc.) They removed the ability to play myplayer offline back in 2k19.

It's not really comparing similar things here though. You can absolutely purchase music and movies that are equal in quality to the physical versions, just like games. Yes, streaming typically lowers the quality with audio and video. Streaming games also has quality issues. If the only options was physical or streaming, I would likely go physical. Since the third option is digital download that's the same as physical, I go with digital download.

Sure there are some digital downloads that are of similar quality to CDs, but not all, maybe not even half (unless you find an uncompressed CD rip - and even then, it's not as good as the vinyl sound, especially if the CDs mastered to modern standards, i.e., brickwalled).

I mean, I'm looking for some quality downloads of some new albums I like, and I can't find any of them.

I think that's where NFT technology is going to become very useful if game companies decide to go that direction. Imagine being able to resell "used" digital games. That's like pure profit.