I have seen a good offer from Microsoft for an Xbox One S that comes bundled with a digital download of a game (Sea of Thieves).
What are the differences between purchasing an Xbox game as a digital download rather than as physical media?
Does this effect the ability to play the game without internet access or without a current Xbox Live Gold membership?
Are digital downloads easy to transfer to future hardware?
Are there any other significant differences?
Trying to write this in an even, non-opinion based way:
With a physical purchase the discs provide the core DRM mechanism - you can't play the game without having the disc in the console - this may or may not be an issue, but finding the game on the shelf, making sure it's in the right case etc. can be a little time consuming.
Digital purchases require you to be online to download them, but if you are playing on your "Home" Xbox you don't need to be online to play them (unless they are "online only" games).
Physical media can get scratched and not play properly - requiring a replacement at best.
Digital media can be re-downloaded to a new hard drive if your harddrive fails.
More and more games are being brought into Microsoft's "Play Anywhere" scheme, where you can play the game on your Xbox or PC - this only works for digital purchases.
You can sell/give a friend your physical media and they can then play the game (but you can't). You can't gift someone your copy of a digital game (this is the primary reason for the differences in DRM and Play Anywhere above).
With respect to the question about "moving to future hardware" - in general either would work, both physical and digital copies can be installed on a new Xbox, with the caveats above about needing to have the disc in the drive or be online if it's not your home console - as for forwards compatibility, that's harder to say, but the way they've gone with the 360 should be encouraging, and that works with both physical and digital copies.
