A major part of the digital/physical debate that people forget

[gigantor21]

VanceIX said:

gigantor21 said:
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.

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.

They don't have to go door to door to do that kind of enforcement with digital content to begin with. It's simply a matter of deciding when and how you can access it and play it, which can be done entirely on the platform holder's end. And your ownership of those games is by no means permanent, as they're not going to keep the networks up forever to allow you to redownload content that you delete, or that is lost to hardware failure. Physical copy mitigates both of those issues.