Will cartridges be a thing again?

[skywake]

To start I know some people will laugh at the idea of cartridges coming back at all. It has been so long since they were the medium of choice that people automatically assume that cartridges are outdated. But people forget that cartridges only ever had one major disadvantage over disks. Capacity. But over the years that advantage has been shrinking. Here's a plot showing every console and its game media size of Cartridges vs Disks. Note the magnitude of the gap when that transition happened in the late 90s compared to where we are today.

 

Simultaneously everything else is moving against disks and towards cartridges. People are increasingly less likely to care about disks for movies than they did 10+ years ago because of services like Netflix. People are more likely to care about read speeds given the way that console games now demand that you install the game to a HDD first to improve load times. And I'm not sure whether or not Nintendo are jumping the gun with the Switch but what they are doing is part of a trend. Hardware is becoming more and more power efficient and, as we see with ultrabooks and desktop PC cases, that optical drive takes up a lot of space. It's a noisy, power hungry, mechanical component in an increasingly solid state and power efficient world of tech.

 

So will cartridges be a thing again? Or are we going to be digital only before that has a chance to happen.

[Energycore]

Yeah I don't mind the switch back. Less moving parts = more reliable

[Oshino Shinobu]

I'm hoping a mixture of magnets and NFC are going to be the next big thing. High speed wireless transfers could be incredibly useful, where you just place the storage medium against a surface and transfer the data. For playing videos, it could be a matter of offloading from the NFC device into the other device's high-bandwidth memory then playing it from there. 

 

If NFC type tech really takes over, there shouldn't be any reason to plug anything in in the future, hopefully. 

[Techicolors]

what's the "Switch" in that projection graph? the Nintendo switch?

 

Discs do have some value, 

- 4K Ultra Blu-ray (HDR)

- lossless playback

- sentimental value (collector's editions) 

[bman7842]

Its funny you bring this up because I was literally thinking about this a couple days ago. I occasionally go on my PS4 from time to time and I just found out recently that even my physical copies of games were automatically downloaded to the hard drive which I guess makes sense. It made me wonder then why don't we use things like sd cards or cartridge like things with faster transfer speeds. Interesting to know there could be a switch. I already have heard of a new physical format that looks a lot like micro sd cards that is for music, interested to see what comes next.

[Scruffy90]

We'll find out thursday. I wouldn't mind the switch back to cartridge provided theyre fast enough.

[skywake]

14 minutes ago, Technicolors said:

what's the "Switch" in that projection graph? the Nintendo switch?

 

Discs do have some value, 

- 4K Ultra Blu-ray (HDR)

- lossless playback

- sentimental value (collector's editions) 

The Switch is the Nintendo Switch, I put it in a different colour because that capacity is the only one on the list that's not confirmed. It's a cartridge but the current rumour simply says that the standard cartridge size is 16GB. I'm not sure whether that means that cartridges can be 16GB but no games will use it. On the other hand it might just mean that the launch games are using 16GB cartridges and larger capacities will come out later. 

 

As for the other points there's no reason why cartridges can't also do those things. I mean they're not going to support BluRays but ultimately they are doing the same thing. Both mediums are just packages that hold data. So once the capacity catches up there's no reason why cartridges can't also do those things. And if in 10 years we still want physical copies of movies? Maybe those will also be on cartridges.

[TheBestUserName]

I welcome cartridges with open arms and warm smiles. 

 

As long as they have nice packaging.   More like DS/3DS packaging, less like GBA. 

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Until the world has gigabit internet, physical media of any sort is going to be a godsend. And if it's cartridges, that's fine too.

 

I'm dreading the days when I buy a game on Steam that I can't play until the next day because the internet here sucks and the game is 100GB.

[Monte_Carlo]

12 hours ago, TheBestUserName said:

I welcome cartridges with open arms and warm smiles. 

 

As long as they have nice packaging.   More like DS/3DS packaging, less like GBA. 

 

 

 

As long as it's the older school DS packages.  I'm kinda bummed by today's lack of any real content besides a box and a game.  I enjoyed the little booklets that came with older games.  Somehow felt like more content was being given for the money.  But yeah... nice durable packaging > the cardboard boxes of ye olde tymes. 

[TheBestUserName]

9 hours ago, Monte_Carlo said:

 

As long as it's the older school DS packages.  I'm kinda bummed by today's lack of any real content besides a box and a game.  I enjoyed the little booklets that came with older games.  Somehow felt like more content was being given for the money.  But yeah... nice durable packaging > the cardboard boxes of ye olde tymes. 

I think it's a sign of the times with a lack of bundled documentation. I feel like Nintendo noticed that many customers like a durable case but are less concerned with paper inserts.  My only opinion about bundled docs is... if it's available I want it, but having it doesn't mean I'll read it. Haha. 

 

But ya another sign of the times is the construction of the plastic case itself.  3DS cases are a few millimeters thinner (overall, you can easily see when two cases are stacked) and are made with less material. 

[skywake]

It's sad that the booklet has gone. I have very fond memories of getting games as a kid and going through the booklet in the car. Sadly I don't think I ever took care of any of that stuff early on, why were games in cardboard boxes in the 90s? But still. More on topic I also have fond memories of consoles that made zero noise and output zero heat. It's one of the reasons why I love the Steam Link as much as I do.

 

Thinking about it the only thing I don't miss, aside from the graphics, are wired controllers....

[TheBestUserName]

2 hours ago, skywake said:

It's sad that the booklet has gone. I have very fond memories of getting games ....  the only thing I don't miss, aside from the graphics, are wired controllers....

I don't recall for certain, but I think I was one of the kids that tossed the boxes.  Growing up, my brother and I each had our own GameBoy, and then some years later, a Sega Genesis. We didn't have any boxes after a while... just the carts. 

 

As for the things you don't miss, I'm currently going through a phase -- that stuff doesn't bother me. Haha. Aside from FE:Awakening, lately I'm playing DS, GBA, and Gamecube stuff.  I'm having a great time. 

 

... but I'm also excited for the new technology and features of the Switch. 

 

 

[Puddleuk]

I was actually thinking about this the other day too and although I fully understand why you would want to use cartridges for a portable device, I was also very concerned about how patches and DLC would be handled. 

 

Todays modern games will have patches of a couple gigabytes and DLC that can be over 10GB or more. The Switch probably won't have the storage capable of holding very many of those on its on-board storage (I'm guessing it will launch with 16GB - 64GB). So the carts must have some form of extra space for patches, which would work but would also increase costs a little or the user must buy their own SD cards to expand the storage further. Even then over time you would need multiple cards or a very large capacity one.

 

Roll on tomorrow so hopefully these questions can be answered.

 

 

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

29 minutes ago, Puddleuk said:

I was actually thinking about this the other day too and although I fully understand why you would want to use cartridges for a portable device, I was also very concerned about how patches and DLC would be handled. 

The 3DS solves this by saving it to the internal storage or SD card. Supposedly the Vita has extra space in the cartridges for this purpose, if not to the memory card. It's no different than consoles.

29 minutes ago, Puddleuk said:

Todays modern games will have patches of a couple gigabytes and DLC that can be over 10GB or more. The Switch probably won't have the storage capable of holding very many of those on its on-board storage (I'm guessing it will launch with 16GB - 64GB). So the carts must have some form of extra space for patches, which would work but would also increase costs a little or the user must buy their own SD cards to expand the storage further. Even then over time you would need multiple cards or a very large capacity one.

 

Roll on tomorrow so hopefully these questions can be answered.

Most Nintendo games though don't have big patches or DLC that's huge. Most of their consoles don't even have a whole lot of extra internal storage to work with. One might be inclined to believe that games released on Nintendo systems are of higher quality control because they can't take advantage of oddles of gigabytes for patches and such.

[skywake]

@Puddleuk

Well technically if you use a disk you have no option but to store data somewhere else. At least with a cartridge there's an option to add extra storage on the package itself for whatever the developer wants. They're going to put patches and stuff on the internal storage anyways but that's not a downside. You have no option but that with optical media. What you're talking about is the difference between mechanical and non-mechanical writable storage. Which is a different discussion entirely. As time ticks on I think flash is going to overtake mechanical HDDs in the same way that I think cartridges will overtake optical media. Hell, we might be closer to that than we are the cartridges thing. 

 

To put it another way, ~10 years ago a 250MB SD card and a 128GB HDD cost about the same. That's about a 500x gap in capacity for the same price. Looking at the price as of today? A 128GB Micro SD Card is about the same price as a 1TB HDD. That's only an 8x gap in capacity. With the Switch I think most enthusiasts will get SD cards for it that are ~128GB. By the time they fill it up they should be able to walk into the shops and get a 1TB SD Card. I don't think it'll be an issue.

[handymanshandle]

On 1/10/2017 at 8:13 PM, Energycore said:

Yeah I don't mind the switch back. Less moving parts = more reliable

Well certainly going back to cartridges would give console gaming more of that retro vibe.

Also modern flash memory technology makes it a bit more practical and frankly I'd be down for it.

Possible a better interface could be used as well.

[Energycore]

37 minutes ago, wcreek said:

Well certainly going back to cartridges would give console gaming more of that retro vibe.

Also modern flash memory technology makes it a bit more practical and frankly I'd be down for it.

Possible a better interface could be used as well.

Yeah we wouldn't be using the massive af cartridges of old. We'd be using SD Card-like storage units capable of up to 128GB capacity as of today.

[handymanshandle]

5 hours ago, Energycore said:

Yeah we wouldn't be using the massive af cartridges of old. We'd be using SD Card-like storage units capable of up to 128GB capacity as of today.

Or maybe something in between.

I think an SD card sized thing might be too easy to lose. I think some intermediary between like what an SSD is and what an SD card is would make for the best solution. 

[Monkey Dust]

On 13/01/2017 at 8:26 AM, Energycore said:

Yeah we wouldn't be using the massive af cartridges of old. We'd be using SD Card-like storage units capable of up to 128GB capacity as of today.

Those old massive cartridges were very satisfying to insert though. I fancy a NeoGeo just for the giant carts, until I remember even a small NeoGeo collection would require selling everything I own. 

 

In the Switch's case not having a mechanical drive in a portable device was probably one of the driving factors. Though there was one hand-held that used optical discs, but I can't remember which one? I can't see Xbox or Play Station moving away from optical to carts next gen though, as optical discs are super cheap.

[TheBestUserName]

2 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

Though there was one hand-held that used optical discs, but I can't remember which one? 

Sony PSP. 

 

UMD discs. 

[skywake]

6 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

In the Switch's case not having a mechanical drive in a portable device was probably one of the driving factors. Though there was one hand-held that used optical discs, but I can't remember which one? I can't see Xbox or Play Station moving away from optical to carts next gen though, as optical discs are super cheap.

Yeah, it was the PSP and the disks were based on DVD tech and were 1.8GB for the dual-layer variety. And as an option at the time it made sense because DS games couldn't get anywhere near that sort of capacity. The biggest DS game was ~500MB. If they had gone with the same strategy with the Switch? You'd assume they'd base it on Blu-Ray but it'd be something like a mini-disk variant. Blu-Ray Mini disks are about 16GB for dual-layer so there would have been no capacity advantage at all.

[creationex]

On 2017-01-11 at 10:09 AM, M.Yurizaki said:

I'm dreading the days when I buy a game on Steam that I can't play until the next day because the internet here sucks and the game is 100GB.

i go to shop , buy bf1 , come back home , yay i can finaly play ! , time remaining 32 hours. , fuck me

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, creationex said:

i go to shop , buy bf1 , come back home , yay i can finaly play ! , time remaining 32 hours. , fuck me

That kind of ticks me off. EA has the gall to sell "physical" copies, but in reality, it's a product code you register for on Origin.

 

Then again, Doom was only marginally better. It came with a DVD... that saved me 9GB out of the now 75GB I need to download.

[creationex]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

That kind of ticks me off. EA has the gall to sell "physical" copies, but in reality, it's a product code you register for on Origin.

 

Then again, Doom was only marginally better. It came with a DVD... that saved me 9GB out of the now 75GB I need to download.

i was so mad , its the only reason i went and bought a physical copy , got out of the shop opened it , and damn was i mad knowing the size of the game and my shitty internet