The cost of making music and films are not the same as making a game? I do not know the numbers, but there are a lot of people involved in getting the game to gold status, could be a another reason.
I not have any numbers, but creating and distributing a disc does not cost much.
For Sony / MS, I am guessing that going from Gold into the store and having it on the shelf is cheaper with physical stuff when you break it down per title. Especially if they do not pay for retail space, but the retail stores covers that and freight. Albeit freight costs are probably very cheap.
It's not cost, it's risk. Those discs you press and ship may or may not sell, and may not sell until you heavily discount them. If you get yourself into a Titanfall 2 situation, where you have a quality product that's sitting on store shelves but not moving, you've manufactured an abundance of supply for something that has little demand, and you've effectively devalued your product. Retailers don't want to be stuck with all that product that isn't moving, so the choice is to either accept the games backs as a return (and then what are you going to do with them), or discount the product through your retail partners to try to sell through what you've already produced. Digital doesn't have this problem. You can deep discount your games for a quick cash infusion if you want at basically no risk, because supply is always only ever as big as demand. Conversely, you can do what Activision does, and sell older B tier titles like Timeshift for $20 forever.
As for why Sony (or anyone else) doesn't want to piss off their physical distribution partners, it's the same reason they didn't release a digital-only console. The # of consumers they would no longer be able to reach without physical distribution is still significant enough that it materially affects their bottom line. Selling more copies on less favorable terms is still selling more copies.
Sony already made a digital only console with PSPGO. I'm pretty sure they had the numbers to back up creation of it, in terms of how many games were purchased digitally, but I think people don't like the idea of
not having the option to buy digital. Also, their marketing sucked a bit for it.
Going by my internet speeds I think it'd be quicker to pop to my local, buy and install. Just saying
Not if the day one patch is the whole game. That happens now sometimes.
Price sensitive people may be looking at game subscription services like EA Access or Game Pass, so that may be the route they go. For the price of 3.5 games a year they get access to hundreds and have new games rotating in. Saving the extra $50 to $100 up front is icing on the cake.
Is it 3.5 games a year in cost? EA Access is 29.99USD annually or 4.99USD if you pay monthly. Gamepass works out to 5USD more than Xbox Live if you bundle it. That would only be 60USD per year.
But stores can still sell game codes and store credit (which they do) and therefore still be kept in the loop. They are the only way to get physical items the same day and often will have special midnight events (pre COVID anyway).
As a retailer, at least for where I work, we made almost nothing when we carried digital codes. Like, $1 per code, so if a person got $100 in funds for PSN or whatever, we made $1, unless they bough 2 $50 cards, then we made $2. We looked into it again at the beginning of the year, and things were a bit better, but it was still something like 10% of the sale. I was always impressed that Gamestop let people trade in games for them, because at that point they were essentially paying cash for them, unless they had a much better deal than we got.