See this is the part that scares me. That my interests will only be served by digital only releases in the future if at all. That my interests, thanks to their being for a smaller audience, will receive less and less releases as time goes on. Again maybe I'm just completely misreading the market here. That could very well be the case but that doesnt change the fact that in what appears to be a very short time (~3 years) the sorts of games that I enjoy are suddenly small beans and no longer align with the market at all.
I am not a huge fan of the vision of an all-digital future. My biggest concern is, that on consoles, this would mean a monopoly with free reign over pricing and policies. Also, I am nostalgical, and I like gaming discs (stupid gaming discs).
But I also know what a pain in the ass retail releases for smaller (and bigger) games are. those are risky. With digital, you can be unfortunate and not earn money, with retail, you can easily
lose money. Production costs, distribution, panic around the time goldmasters and artwork go out for production (the point of no return), the fight for shelf space, and the worst: returned, unsold goods - all this is really exhausting. Digital offers the chance to at least get you game published, with higher margins and no potential tons of returned plastic. It's not the heaven some describe, but it's at least a chance for nieche stuff. So, I am quite grateful. Noone would release a game like Untertale for retail from the start, but thanks to digital we have it. And I think 10 years ago or so we would not have had it at all.
That this model has the tendency to create closed stores, so no olygopols, but a bunch of monopols (Steam, iOS, google play, PSN, Xlife, W10store) is something we have to accept up to a point. With PC, it's still in our hands. Steam is already a force that can dictate/decide about success or failure. GOG, Origin Ubistore and the rest is rather small (20% or so of the market), but consumers still can decide where they get their stuff.
If Win10store really fulfills what some of us fear (and MS might wish), a full control over digital distribution, this would not only be uncool, but might end with the state intervening. Let's see what happens. It will get nasty, but interesting at least.
It's funny that I don't feel the same about digital console, because here, the console owners already have 100% control over the distribution, featuring or denial of a game. But here it feels more okay than with PC, a platform that still has the feeling of a platform where distribution should be open.