People want retail games and if the big 3 can’t cover that market a new and more sustainable subject will fill that space. Maybe it’s time to bring back physical media to PC, a more open system where publishers could make profit selling their retail games similarly to vinyls for music.
To your point:
Tiny sample size: but there is a cool test where a person played the CD and the Vinyl of a song to a group of friends. They choose the Vinyl as best sounding. So he then digitally recorded the record and tried again, playing the vinyl and the recording of the vinyl. Nobody could tell the difference!
Which means one of two things: the vinyl setup was better and/or the CD was not mastered in a appealing way. Likely is number two.