The prospect of lost games and consoles isn't on the horizon, it's already here. For example, my PS3 borked pretty hard. I found a shop that promised to fix it, and after a month and a half of back-and-forth and missed deadlines, they gave it back in a trash bag and told me that the repairs were more than the console was worth and they weren't going to bother (despite telling me at the start that they would do whatever I was willing to fund, even beyond the item's value), and I lost a lot of savefiles. Yes, I should have made some backup saves with thumb drives, and thankfully my usual stubbornness about owning physical copies made things a bit less painful. But not having the means and skills to make repairs and not having access to somewhere that was willing was one of the most infuriating things I've encountered that was gaming-related. Older consoles and carts have a better possibility of repair, and there's something of a 'passionate craftsman' community that will do those repairs. It's not unlike modern cars vs. classic cars.
If the games were download-only, they would have been GONE and I probably would have another month (optimistically) ahead of me convincing Sony that the replacement console belonged to me and getting my games back. Five years from now and this would most likely be impossible. As mentioned above, stuff like this is already happening to games on mobile devices, plus consoles that are two generations old (I'm looking at you, Wii). PC has been dealing with this for a very long time already.
The whole thing is part of 'modern' electronic entertainment. CCGs are still playable and collectible even after the game becomes unsupported. If WFB players got their wish and Games Workshop spontaneously combusted, you could still play Warhammer. But all that has to happen for download-only media to die is...absolutely nothing.
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