It's certain that the industry would like to believe that gamers will simply just shift to digital when physical gets abolished, and yes, this could be true to some extent. Problem is that not all digital sales are equal, so it's likely that physical-first gamers who would have paid $70 for a physical game will only pay up to $30 for the digital version of the same game. And just like that, the entire idea of higher margins on digital games gets destroyed.

People will pay whatever publishers charge for digitally because they will have no choice otherwise, and that's basically the end of the discussion on that. If it's $70 digital, then it'll be $70 digital unless you can make your own Mario Kart or GTA or whatever. 

Even for home consoles, the disc drive is essentially useless. A Blu-Ray drive is basically like 50MB/sec max at top speed, that's pathetically slow when the SSD in the PS5 is 5500MB/sec. Discs are dead at best all they can do is hold the data so you can transfer that to your SSD, running games off the disc themselves though is pointless in today's day and age. 

That leaves cartridges, but to get equivalent speed to the UFS 3.1 internal storage the Switch 2 costs more, the same way faster speed SD Cards are more expensive than slower ones. It doesn't come for free. So you have more expensive Switch 2 software pricing. Once the whole "yeah but you can get the physical copy for the same price" thing goes out of the window so does most of the appeal of physical games. If Nintendo is going to charge more for physical games, well then the whole debate over what's better kinda goes out the window. 

Sure when you could get it for the exact same cost, that's one thing, but once gamers get a taste of having to pay more, most are going to bail out and switch to digital only. 

But even putting that aside, virtually all 3rd party games will be Key Cards, they already are, it will get worse not better once the PS6/Next XBox show up and don't have any physical media period. At best you'll have maybe a USB disc drive option for like $100+ for old disc titles assuming backwards comp is even a thing, but a disc drive in the box as a standard? That runs actual PS6 games? Who actually thinks that's going to happen. 

That's the kind of arrogance that Microsoft displayed with their Xbox One, "You will buy it and you will like it."

It isn't arrogance if virtually every hardware manufacturer is essentially of the same mind. 

That's just market reality. 

You can still buy movies on physical disc for example too ... most consumers don't want to. Same for music. Sure there is a tiny audience of hipsters that think they're cool causing a small surge in vinyl record sales or something but by and large most people have not bought disc based media for movies or music in years if not decades at this point and gaming was never going to be in the long run that different. People got used to it with movies and music, the hold outs will get used to it for games, it's not the end of the world. 

Just because there's a loud minority on message boards that is going to be dragged into a digital age kicking and screaming just is what it is at this point I guess. I don't have a strong opinion one way or another. 

Nintendo will carry the torch of offering their own games on actual carts for this gen, but even that is not very appealing when they are no longer subsidizing the extra cost of the cart + packaging + shipping. It's one thing if you can get either option for the same price, but when you as the consumer have to actually pay the extra cost for the cartridge + packaging + shipping yourself, well then it's not such a great deal anymore. 

If the PS6 is announced in a year or two and without any additional disc drive option, they will have a hard time.

Many PlayStation gamers will be pissed if the PS6 only is backwards compatible to digital PS4 and PS5 games, but not to physical PS4 and PS5 games.

I'd be very confident that the PS6 and the next Xbox console will come with physically media as part of the console. Whether it comes in the form of a disk drive or something else is up for debate. Having a retail presence is unbelievable important for all the console manufacturers. 

There probably will be an optional USB disc drive you can buy for like $150, it just won't run any modern PS6 games. It will be for legacy disc titles from the past. Probably only Sony will offer that too, MS is out completely. 

Running modern games off discs is just unworkable anyway, a Blu-Ray drive can read at maybe 50MB/sec ... that's pathetically slow in this day and age, the PS5 SSD is 5500MB/sec, the PS6 will likely be considerably faster than even that. 

That basically renders the whole idea of a game on a disc useless. It's just there essentially then to transfer data to the SSD, not to actually play a game. It's basically just a glorified key card. 

If PS6 doesn't have a disc drive and XBox doesn't have a disc drive and Steam obviously doesn't ... you're just going to have to accept not having a disc drive for games. Like there's no real debate at that point. 

For the record I'm not saying this is good/bad/in between, I'm just looking at it from what's likely to happen and the business side of it. I don't like that Netflix basically is destroying the physical media/theater model of movies, but me not liking it doesn't change the reality of it. 

I'd agree that disks don't make as much sense anymore because of the slow data rates. But I still think they'll all have a physical option to keep their retail presence. Carts would make the most sense as their speeds can be the fastest plus their capacity doesn't really have an upper limit like a blu ray disk. If I'm being honest I think Sony will stick with disks while I'm unsure what Microsoft will do. 

I'm just going to add to this. Sony owns Crunchyroll, which sells physical anime Blu-Rays. The Anime Industry is largely dependent on a small group of people who buy statues, T-shirts, and Physical Anime. Sony wouldn't hamstring this business by taking away the ability to play Blu-Rays.

Hopefully, we'll see more game cards size options. Only having a 64 GB game cards besides the game-key cards is ridiculous.