Downloading is just a delivery medium, a number of SNES games included more than one language, and you cannot meaningfully play Watch Dogs with thousands of players. (I mean, yes, thousands of people are playing the game simultaneously, but you don't concurrently interact with all of them. Most people are playing their own game, not playing with you. This is the same as SNES games.)
So I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to draw here.
Replace Watch Dogs with any game you wish and the point still remains.
In 1990 you had a game that was 1-2 players, 16 bit, no upgrades/updates in content or playability, no versatility in mediums, limited scope of possible actions within the game itself. In 2014 you can play with a number of players greater than 2, a few more colors, constant updates in content and playability, easy played on any number of platforms and a drastically increased set of possible actions within the game.
You are frustratingly trying to explain that a narrow capability system with great stability is greater than a wide capability system with a decrease in stability.
I will be driving a car that breaks down every couple months and you can continue to ride your skateboard everywhere.
The ability to update a game later means that QA can be less thorough, this makes things cheaper.
Versatility in mediums? Having the choice between download and DVD is much cheaper than any cartridge. Or wait you're talking about platforms? There have always been multiplatform games. And being multiplatform means you expand your audience perhaps 50% while using the same art assets and a lot of the same code; that doesn't make a game's price higher at all. The amount of code you can share keeps rising, too.
So while games are prettier and more complicated, with art and animation getting crazily expensive, talking about convenience features like translations and downloads and patches is a red herring.
So I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to draw here.