>If you're purchasing a game right before playing it, a 50GB install and a 20GB patch is probably easier than getting your hands on a mega drive game.
To be fair, one half of my house is a literal online retro games store, so perhaps my experience circa 2020 is not the norm.
But also to be fair, back in the day you could simply walk down to the nearby shops, buy the cartridge and play it as soon as you got home.
I'm not necessarily making an argument as to why everyone should own a Mega Drive in 2021 (although if you enjoy collecting physical media, there are some fantastic hidden gems on that machine - my personal favourites are Rocket Knight Adventures, Alisia Dragoon and Shadow Dancer!), but modern console gaming has become a lot less streamlined than it used to be.
With the PS5 and Xbox Series X emphasising their ultra-fast SSDs, I can only see this becoming worse.
When I launch a "modern" game, the auto-updater "jumps right in" and plays with my system. Sometimes it loses, like in the reported cases of Steam wiping whole disks. Then, sooner or later, if everything goes well, I might have an opportunity to play the intended game instead of "Storage Space Manager 2021 SSD Edition", "Backup Busters", or more hardcore multiplayer titles like "Server Overload".
If you're buying the game ahead of time or already own it, then shouldn't auto-updates take care of things so you can jump right in?