> Its major advantage is that it automatically saves state, and the state saving is player-independent.

Yes, it's pretty mad if you think if what you would need to do to replace it.

Either you have a system with QR codes or simple ID chip to refer to some URL. Now you need a server, media licensing agreements and somewhere to store progress information, subscriptions, on and on. And the eternal temptation to abuse the data if it's in the cloud.

Or you store all the audio in the card, and now you need a memory chip and PCB in every card, plus some proprietary USB/WiFi/Bluetooth device to write the cards.

And the barely-makes-contact head system is genius too rather than sliding gold contacts. And it just has paper label inserts.

The only real down sides of cassettes other then the obvious physicality if you don't like that, is they integrate badly into modern cars, have a fairly short run length (and occasionally get chewed up). And if lots of need to be authored quickly, that's too bad!