1. It's my personal opinion, do I have to state that explicitly for everything I post on NeoGAF?
2. Nintendo has a solution for that problem, but only as long as they wish to grant me the opportunity to use that solution it is a solution
3. If my SNES breaks I can still buy another one and play my games on that one, I'm not talking about playing my 3DS games on a Nintendo DS 3 or a Nintendo DS 4. It's really just that I cannot (realistically) replace a console with a lot of dl games and get all the games back.
4 & 4a: As long as the services are running and possibly with added inconveniencies.
5. I don't need these products for anything else (besides one flash drive for work)
6. Again, see 1. The alternative to download games on 3DS are flash cards which definitely don't have a worse longevity than all the options I have to save download games. Regarding discs: Of course they can break on their own but I take a lot of care for my games, so this is quite uncommon. My consoles however, especially my handhelds, I need to use to play my games and they can break over that. My DS Lite for example is broken (hinges) and my DS before that was so scratched that I could not use it anymore.
1. You don't have to state it, but it has nothing to do with
Why exactly is digital "really never" acceptable? and is pointless in the discussion.
2. But again, Nintendo's problem is not a general problem of DDs.
3. Of course you can replace it. If my PS3 will ever break I buy a new one, hook up my external hard drive and play the games. It's also likely I can just redownload all my games anyway.
4. No added inconveniencies and with offline mode the service doesn't even need to run (although it's likely they will for a long time).
5. You don't ever use an external hard drive? Okay, but don't blame me when you lose your (not game related) data. Anyway, they're still very cheap and considering that buying digital games is usually cheaper than buying retail games I don't see a huge problem here.
6. See the answer of 2.
If DD is done right (and Nintendo is currently the only noteworthy offender here) there are hardly any real drawbacks compared to retail releases.
So it's really all down to personal preferences, e.g. the urge to physically own something or the joy to put boxes into your room vs the convenience of not having to change discs/cartridges or not having to wait for the shipping of the game.
Of course it's still the best to offer the customer
both options, but that's not always possible or a profitable option. Also DDs are not the reincarnated Devil.