I don't think it would have made a huge difference to piracy, people were pirating budget games on the 8 bits.
Shops & distributors received the biggest cut. The publishers/developers were getting around 25% of the retail price and they would need to recover their upfront costs from that.
Seems like the app store model is the way ahead going forward from this but you do miss the boxed games. The printed manuals on some 16-bit products like flight sims were brilliant.
Handing over an Apple, Sony or MS gift voucher isn't the same as a retail box and I pity the games stores that will die out if everything becomes digital download in the future but once again pirates will surely find a way to circumvent DRM controls which is a shame.
