Update thanks to thethatfox:
Physical game cards may also not actually contain the game:
Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card Overview
Game-key cards are different from regular game cards, because they don’t contain the full game data. Instead, the game-key card is your "key" to downloading the full game to your system via the internet.
Update 2: There is probably a difference in Game-key cards and card that contain real game data. So we don't know right now how often these game-key cards are used or if nintendo is using them.
We didn’t buy most games when I was a kid, we rented them. There were countless games we paid $5 to rent for a week and that was plenty of time to finish the whole game and return it.
I only had one rich friend who had like a hundred games he owned. He let me borrow some of them but most of them I had already rented and finished myself. There were only a few games I ended up owning myself, such as Tecmo Super Bowl and the Legend of Zelda.
Some games could also be bought used for a lot less than full price (at stores such as The Games Exchange). They also bought games back from you when you were done with them!
If I could time travel to live back then as an adult I would rent everything and only buy a game if I foresaw wanting to play it long after a week was up.
Many people still rent games, for even cheaper then they did back then. Xbox Gane Pass and similar services are popular for a reason.
Most of the games I buy today are less than $10 anyway. What I want from games has really changed, and a lot of the time I’m just playing free Roguelikes rather than commercial games.