Digital is cheaper for me. At least here in Argentina... for now.

Dark Souls 3 is at $1499 pesos (retail). I can buy it for U$$60 which roughly translates to $862 pesos. Around $637 pesos of difference! A fucking lot of money.

But this situation could change at any moment, the dollar has been going down but it's probably not a permanent trend.

I stay retail, mostly because of price. I have bought a few digital titles when they're on an xbox live sale though. It will stay this way until the prices are more competitive. I've picked up a physical copy $30 cheaper than online at times... At launch. Not to mention no chance of trade in... Something I don't typically do but.... Options.

Packaging, shipping and retail costs being removed should be considered and the prices should and will come down. I'll happily wait patiently until that happens.

I just checked my almighty Excel file:

Digital trend per system 2013 - 2016:

I'm in Australia and prices here are ridiculous. Often $100 for an online title day one. How does buying from other regions work? 

It just purely the stupid price differences between retail and digital to why I will take a retail copy over digital take the recent release of The Division on digital its at a whopping £54.99 compared to my pre order I paid on ShopTo of £37.36.

If you wanted also with a retail copy you have the option of cashing it back in to get £25 of what it cost you 4 weeks after if you have completed everything and feel like it has nothing more to offer. Company's should be actually trying to sell you a digital copy for £24.99 so whether I think its an amazing game or complete trash your not putting a used copy into circulation that will cost them 5 future sales as it circulates around and people pick it up used rather than new.

Also did a thread last year about how if more competitive pricing would make people consider going more to digital that kinda fits in with how a lot of replies here feel http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=205243&page=1

Retail, especially when they are the same price as digital. Having a physical copy that you can sell/trade is much better than having a digital copy imo

I am in the army myself and we have really crappy internet in the Barracks, like 50-60Kb/s at the best off times. Online game and downloading are just not going to happen.

When I have updates for games like Fallout or The Witcher I need to leave the console on for litteraly days.

Not complaining however because Retail lets me play the games during my off-time. So you can imagine 90% of my money for gaming goes into retail games.

Well Russia and Brazil are usually the cheapest regions. I mostly use Brazil.

The price differences for full games that are usually sold in stores (commonly known as $60 games) aren't that big. For example, a new game that comes to the Xbox Live Marketplace usually costs 70€ here. Buying it from the Brazilian or Russian store will usually cost you around 45€ then (~36% cheaper). Certainly a better deal but even then you can find special offers for the retail version on release date that will cost you about the same.
That's why I don't buy these "$60 games" from the Marketplace.

BUT digital only games (your typical $10-$25 games) are pretty much always 50% cheaper on the foreign Marketplaces. Combined with a Deals with Gold offer, even if it's only 33%, makes all those games very attractive.

There are two methods of buying games from other regions. You can get a 2nd and/or 3rd credit card. Reason for that is you need a billing address in these countries and if you already have a CC connected to your current XBL region, the card will probably be disabled by your CC company.
So the easier method is (IMO) to buy foreign prepaid codes. To redeem the codes you need to change your language and country to the one that corresponds to the currency you bought. Then just buy the games from the store on either your XOne or the Xbox.com page.

Though i largely agree with you(you need internet for updates and online play anyway, so if you can do that you could go full digital) i don't think any of the three will dare to take the step. We have all seen what happened when MS announced XBone as digital only, and any of them would simply lose a lot of customers if they went digital only. If Sony wend digital only i would move to Xbox for most of my gaming. Frankly Nintendo is probably the only one that could get away with it, since their exclusives are the practically the only things selling anyway's.

Thank you! Will most certainly take your advice.