Digital VS Physical

[WC4Life]

The Fury said:

You need competition. How is removing games from store shelves helping anyone but the console manufacturer's own stores? If there is only 1 shop to buy your games from, prices would be fixed, they kind of already are (see Killzone Shadowfall, a launch game, £35 on PSN, you can get this for a £5). There would be no companies competing for your money for pre-orders or 6 months down the line once everyone has forgotten about the game, it'll be £45 and it'll stay £45. The option and solution is to allow retail stores to sell digital codes, and because there is no disc, no returns and no exchanges on these code, it should be cheaper. If I goto GAME in the UK and see a £40 disc game and next to it a £35 digital , I might think to myself "Yeah, I know I'll play this, I might as well just get the £35 digital code instead." Once digital codes are available like this in stores, PSN would have to compete against them, reducing the cost.

The rest of your points are valid from a convience point of view, except the server thing. Regardless of if you have a disc copy or digital, if they turn the servers off, you can't play. 

The laws of demand exist in digital space too. I don't think console manufacturer can fix prices for other publishers. Let's say EA does $60 pre-order for a new game, Activision can counter and go for $50 instead. At the moment development costs are gathered mainly from physical retail sales, that's why the pressure to drop digital price is not there. Physical copies are already manufactured and thus take precedence, the money has been already invested by the publisher. When it's all digital and a high budget game bombs then the publisher has no other choice but to lower the price. PC digital space will keep console equivalent in check. Game costing $20 more on console digital store will not have any chance against PC digital version, when both are digital only.