This should come as a surprise to no one. Movies and music went digital a long time ago, same with PC gaming, so it was only a matter of time before console gaming followed suit.
From a technological standpoint, games aren't even read from the disc anymore. Modern disc reading speeds are too slow to load game data. That's why modern games are installed directly to the hard drive. When you buy a physical PS4 or PS5 game, the disc is nothing more than a glorified key to unlock the game that's already installed and ready to go on your console. Nintendo Switch games were the exception since they used cartridges, but even those had slower loading times than just installing the game on the hard drive. Heck, there are still Switch games out there that don't even give you the option to run off the cartridge - you have to download the game anyways.
And despite the anecdotal evidence presented in this thread, and the plea from people to keep physical gaming media alive, the numbers don't lie:
The vast majority of the gaming public does not buy physical media anymore. Only 15% of game sales on Playstation are physical. Square Enix and Capcom released financial reports not too long ago, and their sales numbers for physical media is pitiful.
Square Enix's physical sales only account for 19% of their total sales, and Capcom's numbers are even lower at 7%. Nintendo fairs better,
with 67% of their game sales being digital, but that's quite an upward trend from last year
when 53% of their game sales were digital.
Now there are benefits to an all digital future. As an old fart who's been playing games since I was an amoeba, I have amassed quite a collection of boxes that do nothing but take up space. Maybe my Wii U copy of Rayman Legends can make for a fine coaster? In any case, I'm running out of shelf space or this stuff. I ended up boxing up everything and shoving it in my basement in order to make room for other things. Meanwhile, my Steam library contains hunders of games and is no bigger than the black box I have tied to my monitor and keyboard.
But convenience comes with a trade-off, which is consumer control. This is the part that people are afraid of, myself included. Companies have been shifting away from providing products in favour of providing services instead. This works better for them because it's easier and more profitable to force people to pay subscription fees over a long period of time, compared to the alternative of working hard to sell people on individual purchases. Digital media is also a lot cheaper for them to distribute over putting a disc in a box and shipping it around the world.
Not to mention that it also makes it really easy for them to cut people off from things.
Just the other day, Sony announced they were removing movies and TV shows off of their service with no way for people to access them even if they already paid for them. It's also why Ubisoft shoves Uplay into everything. Ubisoft can cut me off from a Steam copy of Rayman Legends if they wanted to, but if they want my Wii U copy then they'll have to come to my house and pry it from my cold
, dead hands beverage.
Ultimately this boils down to how much we trust the companies that provide these services. People seem to let Steam slide in this regard because they seem to trust Valve as a company, but I don't know how many people trust Sony. There's also an element of consumer apathy in regards to this. Companies keep pushing how far they can take things, and they'll keep going as long as people are willing to give them cash. We can scream about this all day on social media, but money talks a lot louder. Just look at the Pokemon series as an example - people have been noting the drop in quality of the main games for quite some time, but the games keep breaking sales records which gives The Pokemon Company no incentive to make a better product. Personally, I'm gonna vote with my wallet and continue to play my totally legitimate game rips on my PC via emulation.
