>of course someone is gonna pop up the issue of the SSD production cost. it was similar to the case of cartridges back then (more expensive than CD-ROM at the time), but the difference is that SSD, of course, has more capacity (up to 4 TB, although only the 256 GB and 512 GB variants will most likely be used for modern physical games)

From a quick look on Amazon, a cheap 256GB NVMe is minimum $40. So, add that cost on to the price of the game, are you willing to spend $110 on a new game?

It's not a terrible idea, but costs need to come down quite a bit before it's realistic.