Do you have actual numbers to support that physical is dying? Such as total sales of physical games? Or all you have to go by is ratio? Ratio means nothing if software sales keeps on increasing year over year as well as the big companies manipulating the numbers to make it look like physical is dying. 
The digital ratio includes stuff like DLC, microtransactions and digital only games.

If we compare ratios to games that have both a physical and digital release, exclude DLC, then we can see it still favors physical.
Physical for video games is here to stay, 10s of millions of physical games are sold year. People need to stop with this nonsense that physical is dying.

We know Switch owners mostly buy physical over digital, but it seems PS5 gamers do as well, once we exclude stuff like DLC and microtransactions from the "ratio"

I'd be curious if we have YOY sales of physical games, but for now the below will do to prove that physical isnt going anywhere.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-11-19-playstation-5-owners-prefer-boxed-games-to-downloads

"PlayStation fans across Europe and beyond heavily favour retail for their game purchases, with more than ten million boxed games sold in the console's first ten months on sale.

The figure comes from Global Sales Data's presentation at GI Live: London last month, where the firm's video games consultant Sam Naji took a deeper look at the console's cumulative sales from its launch in November 2020 to the end of August 2021.

GSD tracks full-game boxed sales from 23 countries and digital sales from 49 and covers all the major publishers.

The company found that retail has consistently outsold digital, with 51% more boxed games sold than downloads by the end of August.

November 2020 was the only month where full-game downloads have outperformed retail sales at 950,000 units compared to 840,000. After this, PS5's retail games have consistently outsold digital every month.

And the gap has widened over time. In December 2020, five retail games were sold for every four downloads. By the end of August, this had increased to three boxed games for ever two digital.

In total, 10.14 million boxed games were sold for PS5 between launch and end of August. December, January, June, July and August all saw more than one million games sold within the month.

Meanwhile, 7.51 million digital games were sold during the same period -- and no single month saw more than one million sales."

I voted never.  Nintendo isn't going all digital.  There are too many customers in physical sales.  The "inevitable" all digital future has been talked about for so long now, that it's passe.  It's not coming.

People that say never usually end up wrong. 

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
— Simon Newcomb, 1902

I don't want to spend too long arguing in this thread as the demise of physical is inevitable to me, we live in a digital world now. My mind isn't going to be changed because the growth of digital is clear as day to me and I doubt people championing physical are going to have their minds changed either, that will take a few years for more evidence to stack up. So I don't think there's going to be much point in posting endlessly in debate.

Just want to say that ratio is everything in this discussion. Because as the ratio rises the amount of total sales needed to meet 10m physical exponentially increases. Total sales are irrelevant if digital ratio continue to rise as it has been. I.E once you reach 99% digital sales you would need to sell 1 billion copies to sell 10m physical. The only thing that matters for the end of physical is the continued rise of digital ratio and the only argument for physical not disappearing is the digital ratio will stop rising.

So even if this happens:

2021: 400m physical software, 400m digital software
2022: 410m physical software, 450m digital software.

Yes physical software numerically increased but that's just due to overall software increasing likely due to the specific titles released. The digital ratio is continuing to rise and that's all that matters.

Digital Ratio IS rising for all platform holders and if it continues to rise the end of physical is inevitable. Whether you believe that will take 10 years or 40 years.

But the idea that physical media will even exist in 2060 is a crazy notion. I'd be surprised if the successor to the Switch 2 even has a physical drive, much less their console 6 generations down the road. (Though this is assuming consoles as we know them even exist in 2060).

Publishers and Platform Holders will be pushing digital more and more as the years go by also, they have more control of digital titles and I'm sure they'd love to not have to produce and organise shipping millions of boxes of games around the world for no reason.

So it all boils down to just one thing. If you think digital ratio is increasing now and will keep increasing, physical will die. If you think digital ratio is increasing now but will stop, then you can say physical will survive.

But in 40 years the idea of having to produce and ship millions of physical copies around the world and for users to have to put in a physical object into their consoles and swap discs/cartridges is going to seem archaic and relegated to retro consoles.

People need to remember how far technology has come since 1980 and really ask themselves if they can truly see physical media surviving another 40 years to vote "never". Otherwise we will wait and with every fiscal year that passes and every report of every game like Animal Crossing selling "50% digital!, 60% digital!, 70% digital!" perhaps some will begin to change their mind.

To quickly address the GSD post, from the same article you posted:

"Digital's lead can also be seen in the cumulative sales from January 2019 to August 2021. Across those 32 months, 102 million full games were sold digitally, compared to 81 million boxed games"

Looking at one console, one year, etc isn't enough to see trends. In-fact the data for PS5 physical outselling digital can just as easily be used to support that we are moving towards digital, as the digital ratio is still higher than the PS4 was in it's first year. 

The problem here is that the niche in the music market can be catered to easily, as the physical media can be played on any compatible device produced by hundreds of different companies allowing this group of people to be supported by many entities. It's not a "Sony Vinyl" that only plays on the "Vinyl Station 5". In the games industry it would require a single player to continue to support it, the platform holder, and the media produced would be playable on only their one device. Making it an even smaller group and the platform holder has to decide if this group remains large enough to warrant continuing support, especially when digital-only offers many advantage to the platform holder.

Also those music figures you posted show physical accounting for only 6.6% of revenue in the music industry and while vinyl may be growing overall physical is falling substantially which you chose not to include from your article?

"However, the boost in vinyl interest hasn't been enough to keep physical sales from dropping. Physical sales plunged 23% to $376 million"

Vinyl grew 4%, Physical overall fell 23%, Streaming grew 12%.

The core of your belief is that physical software remains in demand and is attributed value from a group of consumers that can't be filled by digital releases. This is of course true, the question is how big this group remains and for how long.

You also mention you only focus on Nintendo only, but if MS/PS do switch to Digital only like PC then the result of the rest of the games industry being digital only may erode the fervent demand for physical from those that play on multiple consoles. Equally third parties that are used to only digital releases on PS/XB/PC will likely only release digital versions on Nintendo even if Nintendo offer physical still.

How low does physical revenue have to drop before a platform holder decides physical isn't worth bothering anymore? Before they decide they don't want to produce, store and organise shipping for millions of boxes around the globe? That they don't want to increase manufacturing costs of their devices by including physical media drive? That the space and weight taken up by the physical drive could be used by something else or just reduce the size, weight and cost of the device? That they don't want to have to think about what storage medium they will use for physical games next generation or worse go through the effort of developing their own? How long before Nintendo see's they get the full $60 from every first party game they sell on digital and push further and harder towards it?

Yes there is inherent value in physical games that can't be replaced by digital, but how many people will still continue to care and how long will it be enough people for the "big 3" to continue supporting when an all digital future benefits them the most.

You're absolutely right that disc-based media will be gone first.

I would also say that "gifting" a game is much different than gifting music or movies which will continue to drive physical sales.

When parents buy their kids games for their birthdays or holidays or whatever special event they tend to mostly buy physical, as it brings greater joy when a kid opens the package and sees the game case there.

And the whole switching discs to play a different game isnt as inconvenient with Switch as other consoles. Switch games barely have an install and switching the cards takes a few seconds at best.

This is very true, physical gifts will always be more meaningful than digital because no matter how far technology advances we are still physical beings... Until the dystopian world where we live in the metaverse happens.

The former since the Switch does have a higher ratio for that than the 3DS did. Nintendo is basically a generation behind on that ratio so in a few years or so should get to about where Sony is at now. Physical does have benefits but I think the convenience of digital will win over the vast majority over time. I don't want the benefits of physical to ever go away but convenience is a very powerful force for the masses.

I do believe the vast majority of the market will become ok with that though admittedly Nintendo's policies could slow down that process for Nintendo systems. Their refund policy will hopefully not take too long to get improved.

Digital has already taken off.

People that say "inevitable" also usually end up wrong.

I am inevitable.
-Thanos