WARNING: HUGE wall of text ahead. Continue at your own peril. I'm not responsible for any possible brain damage or your head hurting resulting from me having made you think twice about this whole digital-only stuff being such a great thing...

(needless to say I voted with the majority, being all but completely against these blasphemous, anti-gamer practices)

Wow, I've sure seen a lot of total BS... ehm, sorry: non-reasons to prefer digital over physical. Most of these download-only fans seem to have no clue whatsoever what they are actually saying yes to and they will definitely get a huge door slammed REALLY hard in their face once the provider/company decides to pull the plug on the service that is tied to the games they've downloaded, turning your console into a museum piece with a hard drive filled with next to no playable titles stored on it. VERY short-sighted, to put it mildly.

For the true gamer/collector, this move to change gaming into yet another completely disposable medium, will be the death of their hobby and even to the more casual gamer it should be very troubling (and it absolutely stupefies me that it doesn't) that millions of people are so completely willing to relinquish their hard earned money in exchange for hardly any rights in terms of ownership or possibility of reselling/exchanging older games to name but a few. Rules concerning usage of these games can be changed at the publisher's whim, thereby completely ignoring the user that bought them.

There is no (or at the very least less) personal connection with a download; I've noticed it myself with another medium, Bitcoins. Although it is not quite the same, bear with me and you will understand what I'm trying to say. I once had to handle thousands of bitcoins and I gained profit from it too, but it was just numbers on a screen and to me it didn't feel like real money, mainly because it wasn't tangible, so transferring thousands of Bitcoins to several different accounts didn't feel like handling a lot of money, it was just numbers in a computer, and not the same as counting dollar bills/banknotes, which also gives that "wow, that is a lot of money" sensation, when you see the stacks of bills grow while you're counting them.

In the early days, games were complete and although some of them obviously also had glitches or errors, they weren't game breaking for the most part. All these day one patches, online game verifications/DRM solutions are a true detriment to the enjoyment to be had from what should be a worry free hobby.

If you are that true gamer/collector (and to be clear for those that wonder, I don't mean to say a gamer OR a collector, but a gamer that is ALSO a collector) then you WILL want that box, that nicely painted disc or labeled cartridge and the occasional limited edition, with all the nice and interesting extras that come with it.

I buy a few every now and then, the last ones being two Wii games: the Skyward Sword package with the golden Wiimote+ and the Zelda concert CD, and the Xenoblade Chronicles package with the red Classic Controller Pro and on PC and on the Xbox 360 I have some nice Steel cases. Buying a box with just a limited edition controller and some scratch card with a download code for a game is just miles away from anywhere near being in the same league, if at ALL...

When I look at the many things mentioned in the 200+ comments before me about physical media, then I see a lot of things that can be remedied by the person in possession of these games, discs degrading may become an issue, depending on the quality, but also depending on the user taking care of his or her games. The same goes for scratches or other damage to discs: I still use my old consoles on a reasonably regular basis, and all my cartridges still work on my N64, and my discs all work on my GameCube and on my Dreamcast.

I take real good care of both the discs and the consoles, which means cleaning both the discs and the consoles themselves every now and then, and when you don't want to use them for a longer period of time, you store both in a cool and dark place. And I do mean cool, not freezing...

I also still own a number of Amiga computers (A500, A500+, A1200 and CD32) and these too are still in mint condition and perfect working order, and the same goes for the 3,5" disks that go into them and the CD's, most of which are now well over 20 years old.

Got kids? No problem either: store your game boxes on a higher shelf or behind a locked door, and certainly don't leave any disc in a drive for your kid to put his greasy little hands on. Any form of care, whether it is for your game collection or for anything else that is part of your hobby (like fishing, driving cars or shooting) takes effort, and the result of that effort is the knowledge and satisfaction of knowing that your games are good to go for yet another 5 to 10 years after you've taken care of them once again.

I have yet to come across a single game in my collection (and I own a LOT of games) that doesn't work anymore, regardless of which platform it is on. I am realistic enough to realize that even with good care, part of my collection will eventually be beyond repair or any care I can throw at it, but by then I will be too old to care too much about it, since I will be around 60-70 years of age and I don't see myself playing too many games then, although I have to confess that I always had the same thought about reaching the age of 40 back when I was 20, and I'm still gaming now at 45, so I may yet surprise myself...

One thing is sure, though: around that time I'm pretty confident that I will have outlasted the digital-only owners by several decades, because of them having wrecked their console by means of misuse or over-use, or the servers of their games all being discontinued so they will not be able to play a single game that they "own" anymore, while I will still be happily chugging away on all my consoles with physical media.

Clutter is also a BS reason: clean up your rooms, people! Clutter is only possible without care, games neatly stacked on shelves or in a cabinet of some sorts not only looks great: it is very easy to select the game you want straight away and you actually have a physical representation of your wealth: the games that you've invested your hard-earned money in to collect, instead of an invisible hard drive inside your console.

Sure, it is convenient in some ways, but like DVD's & Blu-rays, hard discs also degrade over time, and if you have a collection as large as mine, then I'll wager a bet that I'm much quicker at swapping a game than the people having to browse through all these titles installed on their console.

As for comparing PC downloads or Steam to console digital-only: that's also not quite the same. Besides what others have already said about Steam, there's also a gray area of solutions on those platforms that will more or less guarantee longevity of those games you bought for years to come, and those solutions aren't as easily available or convenient on consoles.

There are several groups of notorious yet kind people on the internet that provide users with dummy Steam files, negating the need of ever having to log in to verify or whatever, essentially giving you total control over the game, except for the online part, yet there are also solutions for that, and even tons of user groups that simply gather to make their own dedicated servers for their favorite games.

People on PC are still playing a lot of old games that aren't officially supported anymore, such as Counterstrike, Halflife, Team Fortress and even Quake and Doom, and other games made with the same engine. On console such solutions are next to impossible.

Consoles can of course be modded, but would you want to do that and what amount of access does it give you? If it is only for the single player part of a game, then the effort to perform such an operation may very well be hardly worth the trouble.

Personally, I've found modding primarily useful for retro gaming, to forego the whole "I can't play game X online anymore" problem, so currently my only modded console is the Wii, with emulators for nearly every system and handheld that came before the 7th generation (GameCube, PS2, Xbox) of consoles. It even runs PS1 games at a decent frame rate.

Besides my love for retro gaming, the console that I love the most is still the Dreamcast, also because all games can be played offline but mostly because with many of its games, it really gives you that classic arcade feel.

The future will probably be almost completely digital-only, but I think that it isn't as near as some people think or, strangely enough, want it to be and that is a VERY good thing. Collecting games still belongs to this generation of gamers, or at least to a significant part of the 20 and above aged gamers, that are still infected with the cartridge and disc bug.

When the time arrives that gaming goes completely digital, it really has to be such a great game on such a must-have console before I could be persuaded to even think about buying it. Digital-only is fine by me for smaller arcade games, free to play games and add-ons to games, but completely digital? No, thanks. I hope the NX will come with a nice surprise in the form of either a new type of Blu-ray but I will also be fine with some sort of High Capacity cartridge, something that is also entirely within the realm of possibilities, seeing as there are already 128GB SD cards, and they are becoming cheaper every year.

And cards would also be a good solution for all the people "worrying" (whining) about clutter, loss of space and what not. SD cards are small and they don't need to come in big boxes. They could come in 3DS-like (or even smaller) boxes and after purchase you can take them out of their box and put them all in a small carry case, for easy transportation and storage. Problem solved!