What's to become of our downloaded games?

[scottw182]

As we all know, the current generation has flooded us with tons of downloadable games. Some are just ports of older games, but more and more, they're coming out with original games. I don't really care about the direct ports, in most cases I would rather just have the original physical copy. But, there are tons of original games that are download-only that I'm very interested in, and my only way to play them is to download them. I've download a couple here and there, but I've been pretty slow to do much more than that because I'm afraid of what will happen to these games. I don't want to put much money into them if in a few years, the next generations of systems comes out, our downloaded games don't transfer on, and once our older system breaks, we're SOL.

To my knowledge, neither Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony have addressed what they plan to do about this. I know we're a few years away from new systems, but I don't want to buy a ton of games just to eventually lose them. I only buy good games that I plan to keep forever, and I don't like the idea of having no insurance that I get to keep my digital copy of these games, even if my system breaks way down the road.

So, my question is, what do you guys THINK they will do? Is there ANY evidence of what direction they may take, even if it is very slight, or vague? Any input would be appreciated, thanks.

EDIT: Also meant to ask, in the case that our games don't transfer on, is emulation of these downloaded games feasible in the near future (or already happening)?