Change in ownership, yes, you are correct. In terms of legal ownership of the game itself, no one has that. That is the point I'm making. Some people believe owning the physical disc means you own the game itself, while owning a digital copy means it's only licensed to you. No, either way it is licensed to you. That's my point.

Ah, but that enforcement angle is what makes all the difference.

That licensing agreement has been around for as long as I've been playing video games. They had "not for resale" warnings on the box for Sonic on the Genesis when I was little. But we still had plenty of flexibility, as publishers aren't going to millions of people's homes to try and enforce such rules for every game that comes out.

Digital makes it far easier to enact all the licensing restrictions that the industry so badly want to enforce. That's why MS wanted to push their restrictive DRM on used game sales so much in the first place. Streaming services like PSNow, which "#4thegamers" Sony wants to make the standard for content delivery, would be even worse. Physical grants me as a consumer far more ownership over the game I paid for, regardless of what the licensing agreement says on paper.

Long time rentals aka digital games dont appeal me. Especially in consoles. Physical games are the main reason I am still gaming in consoles so that I can own them.

But under the law, it really doesn't. 

It grants you more flexibility over transferring the license, but you still have no ownership over the game.

Also, they don't go around to millions of people taking away access to digital games either. I can play my digital titles, whether connected to the internet or not, whenever I want without having to switch discs. Unless I really screw up, I will always have those games linked to my account, ready to download and play whenever I please.

To me the biggest problem with digital is the fact that it is almost inevitable that eventually your digital purchase will no longer be available to you with no kind of reimbursement. Can anyone tell me with complete certainty that if I buy a game that it will be available for me to re-download for the rest of my life as long as I own the console I bought it on. Basically, in 20 years, do you think I will still have the ability to download a digital game I bought on the PS3 when the PS8 comes out? I highly doubt it.

If that is the point you are making then you are totally correct. And if anyone doesn't believe you, they should try "legally" making a copy of "their" game and giving for free or selling that copy and see how it plays out. Chances are they would be committing a felony generally refered to as piracy.

Physical or digital, as you have said all we really own is the license of the game/content. The disc is nothing more than a ditribution and storage package. This gets replaced with your internet connection and HDD respectively when looking at digital. Same applies to every form of distributed content. 

The real question, should be why don't the content providers give us a standardized option, system and policies for change of ownership. Personally I think it will solve their ever growing used game and piracy problem. If someone is aiming to buy used and finds used game "deals" where the game costs $35 3 months after its release, such a person wouldn't care if he were buying physical or digital if the same game was available digital as a "transfer" for the same price. Basically, it would be a way for gamers to cut out the middleman (gamestop..etc) and sell their games directly to users that want them. That fixed transfer fee ($10) will also be a way for the platform holder to gurantee that money is still made from the sale. If they are worried about people abusing it, all they have to do is put a 4 month transfer hold on any newly released content that prevents people from selling it within they first 4 months or something.

When people say they own the game, they mean it in the same sense as they own a movie or music physical media, obviously they do not think they own the copyright on the music/film/game... but as long as they have the media they expect to be able to put it in a machine that can read that kind of media and play it, for an unlimited amount of time, without some arbitrary limitations like "you cannot lend the disk to more than 1 friend, you cannot sell the disk, you cannot watch it more than 5 times, or you cannot play the game after 1 month, etc.".

These are reasonable expectations to have when you buy a disc, imagine buying a game from someone off of ebay and finding out that the license expired when it's delivered to your door because it was re-sold too many times or you put it in the disc drive before you had been friend for more than X number of days? or you tried to re-sell it through an un-authorised delaer... or the original owner forgot to un-tie the disc from their account.... these are limitations that can be added to physical media if you tie them to an on-line account.

Still, I would like to be able to "tie" physical games to my PS4 temporarily and play them without swaping the discs, then when I want to sell one I can just un-tie the license from my machine (either on the console on from the PSN web site) if the DRM server is down, then the console asks for the physical disc to be present (this way if you go on vacation and want to bring your console, you have to bring the discs for your physical games, but at least you can do it).... obvioulsly if MS offered a system similar to what I describe there, there would have been no problem, it gives you flexibility and control of your media as well as giving you the benefits of the digital games for all titles, if you opt-in!

The problem is not impossible to solve, and a solution that pleases everyone would bave been possible too, neither console manufacturer has done it yet

I'm in Australia. EULAs are only enforceable here if you can easily read it prior to activation (and online doesn't count, either, unless it's an online product).

lol, i think you hit it in the first reply,..  digital still can't be resold.

i have never sold back any games except the couple i included with my 360 when i sold that off.   for me i don't really value the ability to resell games and therefore more fully appreciate the conviences that digital offers.    but if you want to resell your games than physical is the only way to go still.

OT - i think the key point is the question of "can i still play this game in 20 years if i want to".   with physical the answer is certainly yes while with digital the answer is more of a maybe.  who knows if sony or ms will allow me to redownload a game from their servers in 20 years.   i can keep some of my games forever on my HDD but 500 Gb isn't going to be enough to hold all of my games so there are certainly games i could lose.

but you know what,.. i dont' fucking care.   i still have my nes, snes, n64, gc and i've never bring them out.  hell,..  i don't even think i could play those older systems anymore because my tv only has HDMI in.   well,. maybe my gc as my second tv has composite inputs but meh.  i always want to play the newest games so i just don't care about the "20 years" idea.    the hand full of games still worth playing in 20 years will be ported or remastered to the new systems and i'll rebuy them there if i really have to play them.  it's worth the few bucks to buy a remaster to not have to fuck around with generations of irrelavent technology, imo.

PlayStation Now is not much different from music services like Spotify, Beats, and Sony's own Music Unlimited service. The same thing is happening with movies and Netflix.

The underlying repeating theme is that most people are reluctant to change at first, then very slowly they adapt to newer forms of media consumptions without ever admitting being unreasonably stubborn at first place. I am somewhat certain a lot of people who shit on PSNow at this time would be more than glad to pay a one time subscription fee per year to play games only three months old without even needing to purchase a gaming system to play them. Then of course all this unnecessary 'ownership' speech will go out of the window and most would pretend they had welcomed this future with open arms.