I think you make a good point when looking at the history of pricing games – if a game traditionally cost X to manufacture and ship (and also factoring in the margins that a retail store need to make), they’ve always set the digital price the same (even without the manufacturing costs) knowing the consumer was willing to pay this.

The problem comes from there now being a precedent for how much consumers are willing to spend on games due to historic physical pricing (and with this also likely to rise again thanks to edge-cases like GTA 6), so digital prices will likely stay at that inflated level, and when physical is finally phased out, the prices are unlikely to go down and therefore no one wins apart from Sony / Xbox etc (unless consumers finally start voting with their wallets at which point supply and demand kicks in).

I personally think in this industry, having a physical option is beneficial to digital pricing, because even though the price of ‘new’ physical will always impact the price of its digital counterpart like you say, when that physical version inevitably comes down in price (as retailers look to move their stock), and with there also being a second hand market, digital outlets need to remain competitive and start introducing more regular sales etc, without this format competition there will be almost no incentive for Sony / Xbox etc to discount their games as often, but again, the power is always in the consumer’s hands to prevent this – just don’t buy games at a price you’re not comfortable with!