I think digital is great, it saves the environment in so many ways. Paper, plastic, gas to ship product. My issue with digital is similar to some of the other comments, but my real issue is price. Why are digital copies of most games only 5-10 dollars less, sure they drop after a while but so does hard copies. If the companies are saving on the printing and shipping of the physical discs, then I think the digital purchase should be significantly cheaper.

The other issue is storage space, PS4 and Xbox1 need to seriously put at least a terabyte drive in them to accomodate for digital games, considering these games are on BluRay and more graphically intense than previous the game sizes are only going to keep getting bigger, and how about IP bandwidth/capping and throttling. Unfortunately I think digital only games is ways off, and perhaps some others here are right, there very well may always be hard copies, but maybe just less printed.

Do I sense a new form of collectors out there, limited printed copies of all games...?

@birdgang_1 Granted you are correct. And FF7 was an older game, so in a way it was ahead of its time. So imagine RPG like FF series that started to incorporate permadeath.

You forgot to mention the most important game that dealt with death. Final Fantasy VII. RPGs are notorious for the fact that no death is permanent, some games now like Ni No Kuni, simply say your character is unconscious. When Aerith died in FF7 that was one of the most emotionally impacting gaming moment of my youth. I was unaccustomed to permanent death in any game much less and RPG. The game made such a point of making her an integral and important character and then she dies and no amount of Phoenix Downs could revive her. :(