Physical Media. How long till its dead? Never I wish!

I love going to my local games shops ( independents) to get my gaming fixes and love peeling off the plastic sheet , its a bit of a fetish!

I also love buying second hand games and I collect gaming gems, ( Shenmue 1 & 2, panzer dragoon saga to name a few ). I am thinking there will be know second hand market when games become download only and that second hand shops selling these games will disapear.  And retail gaming in general will change forever, going shopping soon will be so boring because there will be NO SHOP'S to look in!!

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo etc will have all the control on the market they have always desired.

I like boxes, paper instruction manuels  and game disc's and want them to stay!! I like to look at my collection from time to time and thinking that my collecting days of phyisical media are soon to come to an end pisses me off big time.


So my question is-


How long will it be till its a dowmload only gaming world and weather you think that sucks or not?

I don't think discs will ever die out but the way Microsoft is pushing I definitely think that retail games will be available online soon

I'm hoping it's never out of fashion to own physical media, as once we lose it we lose the artifacts of bygone eras.

It's all very well having things on your hard drive, but you have to constantly accommodate newer media; therefore deleting old media. I don't want to have to keep buying storage media just for the sake of nostalgia, therefore I'd rather actually physically own the crap I buy.