Just like stores stopped selling mobile phones and tablet PCs since every app is digital anyway.
Oh wait they didn't.

Stupid move. There are still peripherals that can be sold. Xbox Live and Game Pass vouchers. Third party games, which aren't available on launch on Game Pass. etc.

Unless the company has already diversified their offerings, this is shooting yourself in the foot.

Even if physical consoles go the way of the dodo, they have to start selling way more Pop toys and Pokémon socks to avoid from going under eventually (assuming Xbox sales make up any kind of significant portion of their revenue).

You can always fix your console (I have fixed my NES multiple times), you can always take care of the disc so it doesn't have any scratches and you can always be careful not to let it get stolen.

What's the general theme here? I'd rather have the responsibility fall on ME than on a heartless, conglomerate who doesn't give one fuck about me and my games.  

Interesting development. I think the biggest impact ultimately will be for 2nd hand games which Gamestops etc have been running. Physcal game sales is still big on consoles, but on PC it disappeared a long time ago. 

WithPS4 I went personally to digital downloads only since I dont like loading the discs and listening to spinning. However, there are many who only use discs, as they are not tied to an account, which is the fundamental difference in asset ownership.

With the subsription model MS is going to further distance the asset ownership, as the buyer of service has nothing to show for after subscription is over. Is that truly going to be a succesful model? TV channel subsriptions are pushing for tens of channels of meaningless content, and I for one stopped them all years ago. Same with Netflix. 

Nintendo is interesting though. The Switch works with cartridges, and this seems very well working model, and I find it as a real option for digital downloads. 

The person said he will have the games forever, I just said he won't . So all your justification are from the POV of someone that wouldn't take good care of what they have.

Have games dating to Atari still working, do we have MS servers working and licenses active for as long?

Only if the offering is something customers are looking after. But considering Xbox sales on that market they will probably free space for things that will bring them more profits.

Sure it was person choice to delete. And a lot of people on digital services delete and redownload to manage their disk space. I know that I do. And that is one way you can lose your "forever", another one would be HDD issue.

There have been a lot of unwarrented bans and people that lost their games.

There are a lot of free games that you put a lot of effort into it long term and account could be sold.

Still you asked for how could someone lose the "forever" right and I gave you some... and if you go and look for the licenses of your digital games a lot (if not all) have conditions that show you may lose access for them, like soundtrack licenses making they pull it from the store and you not being able to redownload.

Have I said that physical is eternal? Nope, I and Alfredo just countered the "forever" for digital.

Had no console breaking on me while I was still wanting to play it (my PS1 died when I was about to move to PS2, and my PS2 was slow to work on the eve of my PS3 move). Bluray on PS3 and PS4 I have yet to find any scratch or damage that prevented it from reading. And I haven't ever break a disc and can't see how that would happen by keeping it on the cases and inserting/removing from the console... do you play frisbee with your BDs?

But the servers and licenses are totally out of your control.

Maybe you have better chance of being someone uncareful... none of those situations happened to me, but servers shutting down, licenses being removed, etc already happened.

Major benefit, looking at my collection, loaning to a friend, showing off to visits, etc.

I like Netflix, but the quality of the streaming is a lot lower than physical media.

Do stores make 0 profit from mobile and tablets?

Harsh and stupid IF they still make a profit on the console. This only makes sense if the stock space is directly replaced with more profitable goods, but then one wonders, why did they even bother to stock the system in the first place?

Definitely on some, yeah.
I know this for a fact as my brother used to work in Europe's biggest electronic store and there are tons of device that are sold even at a loss. Especially the ones that are on sale. Just a way to get people into the store and buy something extra.
The real profit comes from other stuff such as cables, peripherals or full priced media.

Lets not make a list on how many games become unplayable via there conditions compared to games being unplayable due to servers shutting down.

Servers shutting down rarely happen and if it does happen it happens to online games or games that no body plays anymore. I have a giant collection of old games and due to there age some of them have completely stopped working. I cannot buy the games anymore and I cannot fix them. I check my Steam account and see all my games I have collected over the 12 years. Not one of them is unplayable and that's over 1000 games. 

If you buy your Digital games off a App that isn't well supported (Outside Steam, Live, PSN, EShop) than that's an issue in itself. The brands I mentioned are not going anywhere anytime soon and that means neither would my games.

You can't fight the future. It's inevitable.

No we can't. We can still complain about it though, so that we can possibly help to shape it.