Yeah. I think friendship is tough for a lot of people in adulthood. I was never a social butterfly, but I always had a circle of people to hang out with through college. But after that it's kind of hard. I have a lot of friendly acquaintances. People from work I go to happy hour with, people in my book club, comedians I talk with before shows but I don't have that like Seinfeld or Friends or Sex and the City or Always Sunny thing where there's a group of people I see basically every day. I'm not sure that's really a thing, I think TV shows would just be really boring if everyone just went to work and then spent the rest of their day either with their immediate family or alone. And when I do meet up with people it's rarely just hanging around one of their houses, it's usually going to a restaurant, bar, show, game, etc. Not like I'm going to see their game collection, and I'd feel super weird asking them "hey do you have this random game, cause I've been looking to mooch of someone that has it." 

To the point though, I don't think it's super common for people past their 20s to have like a large group of gamers that they see all the time. Good for people who are in that situation, but I'm not sure how many people are. And I'm sure I play more games than most of my friends who do play, so that's actually another reason to prefer digital, so they can't ask to borrow my stuff XD.

Your logic isn't sound, because if you swapped in microtransactions - which make more money for Sony and Microsoft than software sales - for physical vs. digital, it all breaks down. Where PS and Xbox ended up is not necessarily Nintendo's destination.

It's one thing to say that digital will grow, but it's a whole nother to come to the conclusion that eventually there will be only digital. You have to remember that printruns for non-special/non-limited editions of video games have come in at the low tenthousands for decades, so the thought that Nintendo will eventually be unable to sell 100k or more physical copies of their popular IPs is plain nuts.

I think - or rather hope - that the one thing we can all agree on is that Nintendo will do whatever brings in money and is in line with the principle of not doing any long term damage to their brand reputation as a console manufacturer; this is why microtransactions are off the table for Nintendo. This will also be why there will always be physical Nintendo games, because it would be too damaging to stop printing games.

I'm not sure how physical release reduce the amount of DLCs or microtransactions. Probably it may reduce the popularity of additional digital purchases in games but just partially. For instance, EA earlier in late 2000s and 2010s released many physical versions of video games. And these video games still had DLC and MTX. From Dragon Age to Battlefield, many games had such in-game content. Battlefront 2017 had some shocking MTX (and still has but in other form) but had physical copies in the stores. It's possible to release physical media and still provide some digital paid content. 

This is naive.  Have you ever heard of Sega or Atari?  Companies leaving the console space is part of normal business, even if they were really successful at one point.

Also, Steam only exists, because Microsoft allows it to exist.  Microsoft owns the PC platform and has a gigantic influence over any software on the PC platform.  If they ever decide that Steam is significantly against their business interests, then they will torpedo Steam to further Gamepass or something similar.  Steam can go the way of Netscape.

The real threat is not major players leaving their platform.  The real threat is the wide acceptance of digital only games.  Why?  Because your games really can go away forever.  I can play Sega Genesis games all I want even though Sega left console gaming a long time ago.  Every Sega Genesis on Earth can die, and I can still play the games easily from the cartridges, because several people are making retro consoles.  On the other hand I have digital only games stuck on the Wii and PS3.  When the hardware dies, those games are gone.

The problem with digital only games is not the technology.  The technology could be great if implemented right.  The problem is that you can't trust any of the platform holders.  I bought several digital only Wii games, and I can't play them on the Switch.  Why?  I don't know.  It's technologically possible, but Nintendo won't make it happen (and Sony is just as bad).

YOU DON'T OWN ANY DIGITAL ONLY GAME!  It can be taken away from you at any time.  And the legal terms and conditions might only call it a license anyway.  If you own a physical copy, then legally, in the US, the first sale doctrine is on your side and many other countries have something similar.  If you buy a physical copy, then you own the game.  If you buy a digital only copy, then you don't own the game.

To get to the gist of the matter why do you think Nintendo would always make more money selling physical games instead of at some point forcing everyone to buy games on their consoles digitally? They make more money from selling a digital copy than a physical one so from a business perspective it seems obvious to me to eventually go in that direction when the physical die-hards get small enough in number which is why the video game industry is increasingly going there. You seem to be arguing that Nintendo will be a special exception in this regard but I just don't buy that.

Also the use of the word always shows you're not looking very far into the future with this. You said Nintendo would lose too many customers but you don't know that there will still be a significant physical video games market a few decades from now let alone 100 years from now. At some point later this century I wouldn't be surprised if some governments discourage stuff like physical video games due to them being more wasteful than the digital equivalent.

False.

Sega and Atari left the HARDWARE industry  before online Eco Systems became popular. Also they still make video games.

I own my digital games just like you own your phyiscal games. I have over 2000 Steam games, some dating back to 2005, longer than some peoples entire life spans. Guess what, I can still download and play them.

The best eco Systems are those that are not tied to hardware like Steam, hardware failure is easily replaced by another PC.

It's great owning old games, I have a huge SNES collection, buy guess what, my SNES no longer works, it's CPU died. Half the battery backups would also be dead, the TVs to run old consoles on are gone, and people hate digital because of some extremely rare case that a game (most likely no one heard about) gets removed from a digital library.

The bronze age of gaming before the internet was a different place to play. These days, you would be foolish to play games without their day one patches and optimisations updates. We have to accept the cartridge days are over, those were the collectiable days.

In the end, you can scream the sky is falling all you want, and that's all it is. The day Xbox, Sony, Nintendo and Valve actually take a purchased game off someone, let me know. Because it isn't as simple as taking a purchased product off someone, the negative backlash, court cases, customer trust and down branding are reasons we still have access to old games. The console market likes to take advantage of gamers, this is why MS's BC program is heavily underrated. 

Yeah that isn't true.  I swear people make such strong comments that are just wrong.  

I can download pretty much any classic game ever released on my PC digital.  Can you physical get every classic game released?

Hell I can play legit classic arcade games thanks to digital.  

From a game preservation perspective digital absolutely slaughters physical.  

Nintendo is already a special exception for many things. You acknowledged this in silence when it comes to microtransactions. You could just as well argue that microtransactions make more money than foregoing to do the practice, but that brings us to the question why Nintendo isn't pursuing the path. Which is something that I already answered in the preceding post: It's bound to hurt Nintendo in the long run. This long term thinking is also something that makes Nintendo a special exception. An example of this is the pricing for their games where they didn't follow the AAA industry model of slashing prices quickly to maximize the amount of copies being sold; Nintendo's reasoning was that this devalues games and of course they were right in refusing to cut prices because it has benefited their profits for generations.

Other major examples of Nintendo being the special exception are:

Nintendo is still making portable consoles.
Nintendo doesn't port their games to the PC or other consoles.
Nintendo still greenlights games in genres that the AAA industry has long abandoned.

The puzzling thing is that you say that physical copies are a positive thing, but at the same time believe that Nintendo will get rid of them. Why is that? The evidence is already out there that Nintendo doesn't chase the quick buck, so customer satisfaction is verifiably built in to their long term business strategy. Why would Nintendo piss off video game collectors and all the passionate gamers with YouTube channels who sit in front of their shelves that are stacked with physical video games? It makes no sense to turn positive coverage of your products into negative coverage that is viewed by millions of people.

As for the look into the future, I am looking just as far into it as you do. The difference is that I extrapolate the future from the facts of how Nintendo does business while you use Sony and Microsoft as your basis.

There is zero doubt in my mind that Nintendo eventually drops physical, everyone will. It might be a few decades away, but it will happen. The natural consumer life cycle is younger people replace older people. Younger people have little experience, knowledge or love for physical. Today's kids live in a purely digital world and will not be physical collectors the older generation is. This is just reality. Markets change as generational focus shifts.  Easy example, at least in the US, good luck buying a car that has a CD player.  

I've gone full digital since the PS4 came around. Bought myself the discless PS5 because had no use for the drive. It's just convenient, I can download everything without leaving my couch and there's no useless clutter in the home.
I see no value in collecting physical boxes of anything, let alone games. I get what I need from a game and then move on. There's so many games out there to see and experience, too many to keep replaying the same games over and over.
There's an argument for resale value as a financial thing, that I do see. But you can also just wait for a sale, be it physical or digital.
Yeah, you can argue that you don't "really own" a digital product, but the owning part itself is not important to me. I just want the experience I paid for. Like going to the movies or an amusement park, you don't get to own them either, but you enjoy them. In fact, the most important things in your life you don't get to carry around in your pocket or keep in a drawer. Why would you abandon something you love because you don't get to do that?
No shade on anyone, just my two cents.