Nintendo Switch Cartridges

[Flowey]

So yeah, I know that using cartridges helps with the whole "battery life" on the mobile part of the console since, you know, having a motor running to spin that dvd/cd/wthuknowwhatImean/etc is a battery hog, but any other actual reasoning beneath this choice of Nintendo? Like,  is there other advantages of using cartridges over dvd and shit? Obviously I'm guessing loading time might be lower since the game is, like, "physicaly" on the cartridge, where as on current dvd and shit the game needs to be "read" off the media's surface...? Right? Am I fking retarded?

[Shiv78]

1 minute ago, Flowey said:

So yeah, I know that using cartridges helps with the whole "battery life" on the mobile part of the console since, you know, having a motor running to spin that dvd/cd/wthuknowwhatImean/etc is a battery hog, but any other actual reasoning beneath this choice of Nintendo? Like,  is there other advantages of using cartridges over dvd and shit? Obviously I'm guessing loading time might be lower since the game is, like, "physicaly" on the cartridge, where as on current dvd and shit the game needs to be "read" off the media's surface...? Right? Am I fking retarded?

Yeah, think of SSD vs HDD... solid state is faster. Also, for a mobile console, carrying small cartridges is better than large, fragile, easily scratched discs and also makes the tablet smaller.

[Flowey]

Just now, Shiv78 said:

Yeah, think of SSD vs HDD... solid state is faster. Also, for a mobile console, carrying small cartridges is better than large, fragile, easily scratched discs and also makes the tablet smaller.

Oh yeah the actual tablet would be huge if it needed to read some dvd 

[Mira Yurizaki]

28 minutes ago, Flowey said:

So yeah, I know that using cartridges helps with the whole "battery life" on the mobile part of the console since, you know, having a motor running to spin that dvd/cd/wthuknowwhatImean/etc is a battery hog, but any other actual reasoning beneath this choice of Nintendo? Like,  is there other advantages of using cartridges over dvd and shit? Obviously I'm guessing loading time might be lower since the game is, like, "physicaly" on the cartridge, where as on current dvd and shit the game needs to be "read" off the media's surface...? Right? Am I fking retarded?

Several reasons!

• More robust than optical media, mostly owing to their now compact size. You can throw a 3DS cart in the wash and it'll survive. Can't say the same about a DVD or Blu-Ray (though BD does have a hard coating which makes it highly resistant to scratching and funnily enough, easy to clean)
• Smaller, which may or may not be a plus.
• Allows you to move the unit. Optical media is touchy if the unit itself is not standing still or is in the wrong orientation. I'm still shaking my head that Microsoft doesn't allow the XB1 to be in any orientation other than flat.
• Can have extra writable memory such that if implemented correctly, you can have save games on the cartridge or patches in the game. I believe the carts on the PS Vita do both.
• Can have faster read speeds than optical media. Not just theoretical read speeds, but random read speeds as well.

The only downside as mentioned is cost, but it may not be all that much (32GB SD Cards go for $10). People still think "cartridges" today means what the SNES and N64 were like. Those may as well be complete computers in their own right. Today, a cartridge is basically a read-only memory card, like an SD card.

[Flowey]

25 minutes ago, Jorgen297 said:

Cartridges are currently superior in every way to optical media except price. 

Yeah! I've been thinking about why the F we still use optical media for the last like, 2 months, like I get that there was 1-2 decades were cartridges sucked dick but right now it seems to me like optical media doesn't really offer any advantages over actual cartridges/SSD. Except price.

[Flowey]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Several reasons!

• More robust than optical media, mostly owing to their now compact size. You can throw a 3DS cart in the wash and it'll survive. Can't say the same about a DVD or Blu-Ray (though BD does have a hard coating which makes it highly resistant to scratching and funnily enough, easy to clean)
• Smaller, which may or may not be a plus.
• Allows you to move the unit. Optical media is touchy if the unit itself is not standing still or is in the wrong orientation. I'm still shaking my head that Microsoft doesn't allow the XB1 to be in any orientation other than flat.
• Can have extra writable memory such that if implemented correctly, you can have save games on the cartridge or patches in the game. I believe the carts on the PS Vita do both.
• Can have faster read speeds than optical media. Not just theoretical read speeds, but random read speeds as well.

The only downside as mentioned is cost, but it may not be all that much (32GB SD Cards go for $10). People still think "cartridges" today means what the SNES and N64 were like. Those may as well be complete computers in their own right. Today, a cartridge is basically a read-only memory card, like an SD card.

Thx dude, very informative, exactly the kind of answer I was looking for. And yeah, 3DS cartridges do allow save on the actual cartridges, tested it meself.

[TheBestUserName]

Along with all the good reasons above is also security. Having proprietary carts helps reduce the likelihood of piracy. 

 

I'm happy to see it not using optical discs. I hope the carts have nice packaging; not box art... but size, hinge, clip strength, etc. 

[kirashi]

4 hours ago, Flowey said:

So yeah, I know that using cartridges helps with the whole "battery life" on the mobile part of the console since, you know, having a motor running to spin that dvd/cd/wthuknowwhatImean/etc is a battery hog, but any other actual reasoning beneath this choice of Nintendo? Like,  is there other advantages of using cartridges over dvd and shit? Obviously I'm guessing loading time might be lower since the game is, like, "physicaly" on the cartridge, where as on current dvd and shit the game needs to be "read" off the media's surface...? Right? Am I fking retarded?

Yes - cartridges are inherently harder to copy, regardless of the DRM or encryption used.

This is because they're usually using a proprietary pinout you won't find on your digital memory card reader, making it difficult to just pop them into a computer to create a 1:1 disk image that could be stored and (potentially) later decrypted and distributed on the internet.

 

Other than that, it would be absolutely stupid to use a physically spinning disc or even hard drive in any handheld mobile device in today's age of technology, both for battery life and for durability of the medium and the device. When the PSP first came out, the UMD discs it used were smaller than normal DVDs and flash media was expensive, but even Sony switched over to a solid state memory card format, even if it's some stupid proprietary card format that only the PSP Vita can use.

[skywake]

To put it simply, the only advantage optical media has is capacity. It's technically the $/GB but as a consumer all you see it as is a limit in the capacity based on the amount of money the cost of the game can absorb. On the 3DS and Vita that was 8GB but most games were around 2GB. On the DS it was 512MB but most games were around 64-128MB. For the Switch they're talking about cartridges at launch that are around 16-32GB.

 

But here's what has changed. When Sony first pushed CDs as a competitor to the N64's cartridges? You could fit 700MB on a CD vs ~16MB for a typical cartridge. When Sony tried to push for UMDs with the PSP they could fit 1.8GB vs ~64MB for the average DS game. That's a huge gap in capacity for both. By the time the Vita and 3DS come out? UMDs have absolutely no advantage over cartridges anymore because the average cartridge is around 2GB. But UMDs were DVD based, what about Blu-Ray?

 

And here's the thing that seals the deal for the Switch. If the Switch used full sized disks it could in theory support 100GB games, more likely it'd support 50GB. But as a portable system it can't really use full sized disks. It'd have to go the PSP route and use mini-disks. Mini Blu-Ray disks? Dual layer disks are ~16GB, for a theoretical quad layer disk you could probably fit ~32GB on it. But remember how big the Switch's cartridges are going to be at launch? Yeah, that's right. 16-32GB. So before we even get to the potential disadvantages the one advantage of disks does not apply for the Switch. If/when larger cartridges come out for the system it might even be a disadvantage.