I still think we're a long ways from physical going completely away, and there is the whole argument that most of the time you don't get the complete game on disk these days anyway due to patches/DLC.
PC I don't worry about as I don't see BC going anywhere unless there is a major shakeup with Windows and PC architecture in general.
Consoles being a walled garden I see being an issue once servers are shut off and hardware breaks down.
I agree with others that in 10-20 years I don't see myself coming back to play a lot of recent games. The only reason myself and a lot of others still play a lot of games from the 80s or 90s is they were much more gameplay focused and not as cinematic, making them much easier to pick up and play, regardless of age. Sub-HD low FPS cinematic movies with gameplay sprinkled in (big over generalization) of a lot of modern games I don't see being appealing to return to.
Modern hardware being what it is seems to have much higher failure rates than a lot of the tank-like systems of past gens. You could have a bookshelf of disks, but I think you will be just as likely to run into hardware issues (along with theft, fire, etc.) as you are to losing games from servers shutting down. Really for the most part I think this is a bad time for the collector types. Digital servers, physical incomplete games, unreliable hardware...
PC I don't worry about as I don't see BC going anywhere unless there is a major shakeup with Windows and PC architecture in general.
Consoles being a walled garden I see being an issue once servers are shut off and hardware breaks down.
I agree with others that in 10-20 years I don't see myself coming back to play a lot of recent games. The only reason myself and a lot of others still play a lot of games from the 80s or 90s is they were much more gameplay focused and not as cinematic, making them much easier to pick up and play, regardless of age. Sub-HD low FPS cinematic movies with gameplay sprinkled in (big over generalization) of a lot of modern games I don't see being appealing to return to.
Modern hardware being what it is seems to have much higher failure rates than a lot of the tank-like systems of past gens. You could have a bookshelf of disks, but I think you will be just as likely to run into hardware issues (along with theft, fire, etc.) as you are to losing games from servers shutting down. Really for the most part I think this is a bad time for the collector types. Digital servers, physical incomplete games, unreliable hardware...