Gamers in general don't like change. They moaned when 360 was only for broadband. Cried about PS3 having a Blu-Ray player. Complained about both going HD (I have to buy a HDTV now to fully appreciate it) and so on and so on. But the same people download games on their Pad's or Phones. Which leaves to this...Digital download is more convenient and leads to greater sales. I don't have figures, but I can almost guarantee you that Steam users play more games then console gamers. It's much, much easier to have all your games digital, cloud based, and readily accessible. We've been doing it now for years with Music and Movies. Once people actually use it they'll appreciate it and 3 years from now are going to wonder how did we ever buy these disc's to play games.
The biggest thing that people here forget is, how long will it take to download a 26gb game(most NEXT gen games will be 20-40gb) ? A phone app that is even 500mb (and that is a large one) takes maybe 2-5 min. A 26gb game could take upwards of 4-8 hours to download(even longer off a slow DSL line), nevermind if your sharing your whole collection (want to play 2-3 games on your visit). Think of going over your friends house and you want to play one of your "shared" games, You have to wait at least an hour for the first levels to fully download before you can start playing. It loses it's thrill very quickly if you had to do that....
Think of all the games you have played over the years, if one game had a loading screen for a long time, how much did you want to play that game ?
This is a big issue with shared "retail" games, most people's internet connections are not up to speed. I could see this being a big issue and complaint with people after they have the systems in their home.
Can I ask the real purpose or point of buying an Xbox game digitally vice a hard copy? Especially now when you cant resell? If I understand right, its the same price as a hard copy? So unless you just cant get to a store, why pay the same price for something you cant sell?
Like I said above, Downloading a retail game could take hours but, installing it to your drive from a disc could take a few min. If your one who never sells their games then it might be worth it to buy your games digitaly, No more discs but, you have to deal with that download time (it will take shorter time to drive to the store, install the game and play for a hour before the download completes in most cases)