M$ or anybody else won't have to gamble.  It will be retail that makes the decision.  They decide when they stop selling enough of a producet wheter they want to dedicate retail space for it.  In the US, the cosolidation of electronics retailers has shown how little room there is for retail margins to be poor.  THere is really only one national electronics seller left here - Best Buy.   Walmart is the # 1 seller of TV, Video Games, Music, Movies in the US.  Every single thing in Walmart is a commodity.  So, Walmart will keep selling games as long as there is enough people coming in to buy them.  THis will most likely be the last gen to have physical games.  Hell, this might be the last gen of dedicated game systems.  With PSnow and Win10, the need for a particuler device to game will greatly diminish.  8 years ago, people would have laughed at the idea that people would buy tablets and smartphones in great numbers.  They would of laughed harder if you told them that people would buy games from the interenet/app stores in droves to play on them.

People are now conditioned to accept buying from the net.  Because there are a few hundred thousand core gamers who may be collectors or just hardliners against it won't matter.  Industries move towards the bigger market.  M$ was making the right decision, but forgot how the people who are early adopters in gaming aren't tech savvy, they just want better games.

It is a gamble when you force your consumers to accept a product that they most likely won't like. It's a gamble because if all of the big 3 tried that crap, alot of gamers would just go to pc.  Why would retail deny a physical copy of video games to consumers when there's a great demand for it? Look at all the sales of physical copies of video games. There's no signs of a declining demand for 'em. Retailers make nothing off of digital games. You made no sense with the retail angle. 

Video game streaming is already shown to be inferior to retail. It's dependent on the stability of the gaming networks which is apparently something fun for teenagers to easily disrupt. It's alright for playing old games but not new stuff. 

Most gamers understand that a digital only video game market is anti-consumer and you're literally getting shafted with policies like that. How is digital only anti-consumer?

1. You don't actually own a digital game.

2. You can't recoup any money off of a game that you bought by reselling or trading. I buy a lot of games with the idea that I can get some of my money back later on. In other words, I'll buy a game that I was half-interested in just to try it out. If I didn't like it, I'll trade the bastard in. You can't do any of that with digital.  

3. You can't let friends borrow it. 

4. Digital is not fairly priced. It's often equally priced to a physcal copy. Sometimes, it costs more than a physical version. You can often find used copies of a game for nothing later on while the digital version is still up there.

5. Companies at any time can change their policies in regards to your digital copy. Nothing is concrete with it.

6. Digital is not collectible.

A few hundred thousand people? Plenty of gamers around the world have shit internet, this gen alone is testing me with day 1 patches that can be 6gbs in size. I can't buy a new game and play it, I have to download the patch overnight.

By the time next gen comes around Australia will most likely have decent enough internet to handle what last gen was throwing at us. I sincery hope that those in charge of publishing companies arent willing to throw away sales and potential sales in places that arent North America, Japan or parts of europe.

If they go digital only maybe they can have game transfer stations at the video game store. You bring in a usb HDD, and they transfer a game to you. This would help the people who don't want to or can't download 50 Gb files.

You do realize that going PC is accepting the very thing you're running from......

Yeah, pretty much but if everything becomes digital only then pc is the better choice. I prefer consoles because you're guaranteed to be able to play a large amount of games if you have a current gen console which is fairly cheap compared to pc. The hardware has a set standard for devs to make more games for for a long while. Also I like that i can trade in, sell or let a friend borrow a game if I want to. I save a lot of money with gaming on consoles and that allows me to buy even more games which I like to play. If I can't save money and buy more games then I'll just settle for more quality in games for the price I pay which is thru pc's.  

You don't own any game. You simply own the license to play it.

Once licenses are fully tied to accounts ala O.G XB1, then the licenses can be taken away at any time, regardless of whether or not the game is on a physical disc.

Welcome to the future.

If I own a previous gen console, a ps2 for example and have a ps2 or ps1 game, sony can't take away or prevent me from playing it. I can sell the console and game to anyone in any country, they will be able to play regardless of how sony feels about it. That's owning it. 

I can do the same with current gen consoles. This is me in the future and shit hasn't really changed all that much. Physical copy = to owning it while digital = not owning it.

You can do this with digital as well, it's just extra work, although the end result is slightly different (both of you have copies.) 

That is the License or the right to play that game. If you owning the game legally means owning the IP and thus all the rights for that game. This license is physically tied to the disc. Therefore when you sell the disc, you are simply selling your copy of the license. This is wh duplication is illegal if you are selling both copies because you are creating another license.

When the license is tied to an account, that account can have the license revoked. Thus regardless of whatever disc you use, you won't be able to play said game. And reselling the disc will be worthless cause it would not have an account associated with it. Or rather, your account would be associated with it.

In fact, this is also the reason why console versions of said game can't be played on a different console.

I.e COD for Xbox, is a license to play COD on the Xbox Platform, therefore it cannot be played on tthe PS or Nintendo platform, because the player does not own these licenses.

The ONLY difference between physical and digital games is that a digital game is a digital license as opposed to a license tied to a physical disc. The license itself is digital. This is why if you own the game and not the console, it is just a hunk of decorated plastic.