But not all of my physical games CD/DVDs are in mint condition and some have scratches.
When one owns property, they get benefits from it, but they also have the responsibility to maintain the property or else it wastes away. Sometimes this incurs costs you wouldn't get with leasing, and sometimes it makes ownership more expensive than renting. But still I think that responsibility is a virtue in itself. Not everything should be consumable.
I’d love to see regulation around guaranteeing consumers the ability to transfer ownership of digital goods in a similar way to the analog counterpart.
But I’m not going to keep a collection of old consoles in my living room, so at this point it feels more likely that I will be able to actually play games further into the future if I buy digitally.
This is the opposite of what proponents of physical media heavily argue - indeed, many here are making it their only argument - but I suspect it’s how lots of ‘regular people’ that aren’t saturated in digital rights politics feel.
But the PS5 can play PS4 games, early PS3 could play PS2 games and so on. And Xbox is entirely retro-compatible because they used the same architecture.
Part of my intake process is to rip my games onto a digital format. Owning the physical media, and acquiring the backup legally, gives me a strong legal foothold for creating backup discs or using emulation.
Games are much cheaper in real terms (even in terms of percentage of wages/income, if you don’t believe that’s kept up with inflation generally) than they’ve ever been.