Not disagreeing with your sentiment but you're not right about old consoles.

All consoles starting with the NES had authenticator chips to cut down on piracy. Arguably the only reason the medium survived is because of the manufacturers tightened control over the flood of low quality games, knock offs, and theft. The Nintendo Seal of Approval was a necessity to buyers because it said the game wasn't shovelware garbage.

What's happening today with licenses, access control, and long-term renting from the corpos isn't fundamentally different, just more pervasive. But now we have all the shovelware too.

Also those carts DO just disappear as their RAM dies. The discs last longer, but I bet you have PS1 games that won't read anymore.