Well this explains why the people at gamestop were bashing Playstation and praising Switch and XBox. I believe the girl worded it as, "Thats Sony, always trying to nickle and dime their consumers" when some was complaining about a lack of charging cable with the PS4 controller they bought. Then went on to say how the Switch controllers came wich charging cables out of the box and have vastly superior battery life.

This has no affect on me as I mostly buy physical games only, but it seems retailers are fighting back, fruitless or not.

I think this is more so a response from Sony to retailers, because (for example) best buy has been reducing shelf space for sony product (gaming in general) quite a bit to the point theres not enough room to represent all the games in stock on the shelf, nor do we put out promotional shippers because of floorspace for higher profit products like TV's, headphones etc. in short, retailers outside of gamestop have more revenue and profits to earn on other products than gaming, so the investment is not there.

Well clearly that explanation did not include on your original post 

But i can relate to it , i understand space is a problem for retailer but actually it's not that big on the 90's or early 2000 (hell even on PS3 /Xbox 360 ) era. The problem with online code and online content sale on retailer is also not making any difference , they only take small revenue margin. Many people just go to PSn or Xbox Live and redeem the code on Internet(why the hell people go to retail store to buy online  if they can just do it online) . We have online banking and others payment method. 

Sony is slowly dipping onto arrogant territory again. That might bite them in the ass next gen if Microsoft manages to make a comeback.

What an odd response.  Physical still accounts for 60%-70% of sales of each game.  Why the Hell would they get rid of physical?  And this isn't really taking away options.  If for some reason you don't want to buy directly from the store that you have to go to anyway to get the game, there are still $X PSN cards to purchase.  They are just doing away with the cards for specific games. 

To me this may be a response to people pissed that they bought a $60 game card, but the game goes on sale in the store for $50.  People are probably complaining to Sony, wanting that $10 back.

I'm going to have to call BS on that one.  I went through several games and didn't really find anything discounted enough to bother talking about.  Most were either the same price or basically the same price.  One big thing I did see, however, is that these cards DO NOT reflect any kind of sale going on in the store.  RDR2 SE, for example, is being sold on CDkeys for $78.99, a MASSIVE 1% off.  Go to the actual store and...the special edition is on sale for $59.99, and $51.99 if you have Plus.  Actual discounts.

I'm sticking with my theory is that this is just a move to cut down on people bitching that they paid nearly full price for a game code, only to find out later that that game was on sale at the time for $10-$30 off.

Shelf space is representative of what a company is willing to pay for it. You can’t really blame Best Buy to reduce gaming space in their stores to replace it for more space in home theatre since it generates more revenue in general. Even with smaller space, they can still outbid their competition for the size of their sections. If their sections seems smaller, it’s probably because they don’t feel the need to invest more than what they already do.

You can make the comparison with GameStop, Sony’s investment in advertising in GameStop has always been bigger than with Best Buy, and you can see the difference, their sections are generally bigger since they invest more than the competition.

I never understood that, do people actually go to retail stores to buy digital codes for a specific game? Wouldn't buying a PSN card just do the same thing anyways?

Yep. And it also allows you to take advantage of deep discounts that may be taking place, whereas the card just gives you access to the game.

So you're saying you haven't "bought" a game in almost a decade?

...kidding, of course. 

Truly, though, I'm not hip to paying full retail for access to play a game. I like to own the software I'm purchasing and love collecting for legacy consoles.