Unfortunately, the mainstream pubic is willing to sacrifice everything else in sake of convenience.
Even if i love digital and cloud, i can tell you digital and physical won't disappear:
- There are millions of old school gamers preferring physical.
- Even casual cloud gamers like me will continue to buy physical games. For Xmas, i need to buy kids physical games, i need to see joy in their eyes... i cannot do that by sending a crappy code.
Of course, digital, cloud will be eventually the mainstream but don't immediately think it will be apocalypse. 15 years ago (PS360 era) i remember all those gamers stating video games were dead and will become horrible with the PS4. (most of them were finally more statisfied with the PS4...)
Gamers will find a way to be sometimes listened. (some were announcing a subscription only nightmare, they were wrong: GFN has a free tier, Stadia allows game purchase and the demand is pushing Microsoft to do the same with Xcloud)
Game preservation ? I agree with you but let's ask big tech how they will preserve games and let's pressure them if the answer is insulting...
Ownership ?
Yeah that's cool to keep physical copies but it's not real ownership either (there are always terms,copyrights or any sort of limitations). It's not that immortal either, bad quality CD don't age very well and don't forget to note which friend borrowed your game, because when you forget, it's gone...ownership or not
. No such problem with the Steam family share for instance:
"What if Steam shut down ? blabla"
Ok, we can always find risks with digital but i eventually lost more physical games than digital. Sometimes they disappear from store but not from your library if you already bought them.