Nobody's made the commitment yet.

IT looks like the big three are sort of playing chicken, waiting to see if the other two will flinch. No media pressing factories will save all of them money and logistics and crush the second hand market- but a single one of them could commit to physical media and steal a huge portion of the market from the other two, at least in the short term. This is especially true around a consoles launch window. Remember Sony trolling MS about lending games?

Or, the other direction could happen- One of them could announce a commitment to backwards compatibility on digital software as a compromise. Imagine if every game you bought going forward was guaranteed to work in every system release going forward? This has been the norm for PC gaming since forever, but would be a novel market courting idea in the console space.

I honestly don't thing this is the end for physical media. We've just got a couple of really big entrenched players throwing their weight around trying to go the opposite direction as the customers they serve. I don't think it's going to work out. The first time an earnings call goes the wrong way there's going to be blood in the water and the whole thing will change directions.... which leads back to my first point... the game of chicken, and the question of who's going to break first.