I feel like I have a similar conversation with my son every time he wants to play the older Mario Karts or Smash Bros.
I don't really love this gen as a whole, but theres definitely some great games out there.
Discussion
There's still a good amount of great games on 7th and 8th, and some on 9th but today kids will either need to stick with ownerless digital format or pay the price for good games or stick with the majority of big corp soulless games by the time they can afford buying games. The good thing about today it's that is a lot easier hunting for the games you want for whatever gen but will that last ?
Getting rid of physical media really sucks. I wish GOG was more popular because that seems like the best solution if we have to go all digital. I will say, emulation is a huge bright spot. I'm pretty impressed with how things handle 6th gen games. I still gripe about 5th gen emulation but I'll probably be doing that forever.
For now I'd say to keep buying physical and supporting this format as long as possible is the best but when it's all over GOG would be the way to go. Crazy that we can emulate PS2 on phone today kek