Opinion: The Future Will Not About Hardware Platform (PC/COnsole/handled/Mobile ) but Ecosystem (service/software)

[Bofferbrauer2]

Leynos said:

HollyGamer said:

Or you can still play modern games without collecting the physical media. It's cheaper and the games will still belonging to you. Modern infrastructure will make you able to sell your digital games, share your games and lend your games.  I bet physical will still exist but it will be expensives. 

Not ownership. Digital is a rental.

Not necessarily

Any buy from GOG for instance is certainly yours. You can download the game, copy it on a disc/usb stick/SD card/whatever, give it to a friend, and he'll play it without even needing an internet connection, as the games don't even "phone home" (unless it's an online game, of course). Humble Bundle and itch.io both also support direct downloads for many (non AAA-)titles, the former even through torrent. Those also behave like the GOG games I mentioned earlier.

However on consoles, it's a bit more complicated. Backwards compatibility is coming, but nothing ensures that this will always be the case - or that games are not getting deleted from servers or even the consoles themselves in extreme cases. Possibly also one of the many reasons why Digital distribution took much longer to spread on consoles compared to PC.