I could imagine Nintendo making something like Amibos that contain a chip. So your Mario figurine is also the physical game...

I suspect that the world is actually going in the Netflix direction. You pay a subscription and you get access to a few hundred games at a time. With no control of what those games are and when they will disappear.

Physical only.

The big issue with Physical vs digital is game preservation.

Consoles being a closed platform... WHEN (Not if, but when) those servers go down, you will potentially loose access to your games library if your device or storage falters with no recourse of getting those games back.

On PC, if a game or service shuts down, there is always an alternative and it's easy.

I am holding out on physical with consoles, but embraced digital with PC... As PC has competition and alternatives.
PC also has 100% forwards and backwards compatibility with it's software... So you can always bring your game library for a ride through the decades.

I’ll add collectors as a market. The reason I didn’t mention them before is I didn’t consider it, because collecting physical objects is so antithetical to my mode of thought. I can’t stand clutter of any sort, books, CDs, video cassettes, DVDs, wires, and so on. But just because my brain works that way, I wouldn’t want to reduce the pleasure other people have in owning their pieces of plastic. (I know! I know! They’re more than that to some of you).

So, I was really excited about the Virtual Console when it first happened, and the prospect of having all of my games without any of the clutter; that finally happened in the following generation with 3DS, and I’ve never looked back.

Personally, I’d love to see a robust digital gifting system that can be accessed via console, PC, and mobile. Make video game gift shopping an optional thing. I applaud any efforts made, as a civilization, to minimize the necessity of physical clutter, shopping, and other necessary evils :D

I just noticed, this is my 11111th post.

I'm quite surprised Sony and MS aren't pricing digital cheaper than physical. Charge $50 for digital and $70 for physical and most will switch.

Why would they? People are already fine paying the same or more for digital. The more physical disappears, the more easily they can drive the digital prices up and keep them the same for longer. Digital has always been more expensive, takes longer to go on sale, has no resale value or options, and is still the most popular. The chances of digital prices to go down is virtually zero.

Instead of digital to go down I see physical becoming more and more expensive when it becomes a niche and limited run games is the only way to get physical releases :/ It's already the case with indie games, those are now cheaper digitally than limited run editions.

No, vinyl/CD & DVD/BluRay still exist in a world dominated by Spotify & Netflix. Digital/streaming will continue to be the dominant medium for media but there is still a market for physical.

To expedite the dropping of physical.  Physical has to cut into profits comparative to digital.

Also because steam is cheaper.....  and if Sony keeps porting to PC....  and PC has free online, interesting situation, at least for me.

It's a problem for some physical games now as well. Invariably, there will be some physical games that one day can't be updated to get needed parts of the game. 

Star Wars Jedi Survivor only has a portion of the game to install from the disc, and a large part of the rest of the game needs an internet download. 

Obviously we're not talking about geological/cosmological time scales here, but at some time within the lives of grown people around today. In other words, some time within the next 50 years or so.

To that, I'd say "Hopefully not." There is still a significant market for physical media, including a decent-sized contingent that would refuse to accept an all-digital future. No other segment of the entertainment industry has forced people to switch to digital, and they still give people physical options. You can still buy CDs & vinyl records even now well over two decades after the first mp3 player and the creation of Napster and iTunes (the market for physical albums has bottomed out and even experienced a big increase in sales in 2021). You can still buy movies and TV shows on Blu-ray or even DVD, with some titles still becoming million-sellers (Spider-Man: No Way Home and Top Gun Maverick sold about 2M copies each in just the U.S. last year). Print books still dominate e-books, showing that, at least when it comes to literature, most people still prefer a physical copy. According to digital evangelists from around 10-15 years ago, all the printing presses and all the disc factories should have been closed down for years already.

However, consoles are closed platforms. While anybody can make device to play CDs, records, or Blu-rays, nobody besides the console makers can make their respective platforms as long as the patents are in force. If they so chose, they could theoretically force the issue and decide that their next systems won't accept physical media of any kind. The video game industry could very well be the first and only one to tell people "buy digital or do without." And while it's not 100% confirmed, there's a good chance that MS is going to be the first one to pull the trigger.

I certainly hope the console makers don't abandon physical media, because I'd stop supporting them. But seeing as they have total control of their platforms they're in a better position to do so than other sectors of the entertainment industry, and they're an industry that's done a lot of scummy things to its customers over the years, so I wouldn't put it past them to take the option of buying physical copies away from people. Options are good and disc drives are cheap, so hopefully they don't give people like me the middle finger.