If it really does offer better performance than a disc then it's good. But surely the cards would cost 10x more than a disc. Also a blu ray (DVD,CD also) player is an extra feature for the console.

There's no reason it can't have good media features and still be great at playing games, see 360/PS3/One/PS4.

Definitely don't think it'll be android based and definitely don't think their move towards mobile has any influence on them going all digital. It's just about time. Literally every other entertainment medium has gone all digital including PC gaming, and its about time console gaming does the same.

Download only? Absolutely. Android based? Severely doubt it. Nintendo wants to create their own ecosystem, not ape someone elses. This ties along with that thread I made about how the partnership with DeNA and the new membership is a much bigger deal than people are making it out to be, but I say Nintendo's recent moves points towards that, not an android based console.

I'm fine with a 3Ds like cartridge or SD card for my games. It should accommodate bigger games and has faster read and write speeds.
I'm not into 100% digital though hence I wanted somewhat a physical cartridge for my game library.

Fast Blue-Ray drives are actually about as fast as a standard USB 2.0.  To be be a lot faster and have a larger capacity they would have to be 128GB USB 3.0 - which cost $60+.  Not to mention the newest Blue Rays hold 130GB.

There is a reason Nintendo stopped using cartridges.

They will only do it if the result is cheap, durable, and desirable.

let me elaborate:

Cheap:
They don't have to be as cheap as blu-rays. The people who release digital-only are not actually worried about the disc-prices themselves anymore. It's the whole logistics nightmare involved that jack up the costs nowadays. The publishers who can afford to release physical could conceivably afford paying 5-

If you mean ROM chips by flash based memory (there is actually a huge difference between those 2, even though they get confused all the time), I say yes. Real flash chips would be too expensive but ROM chips are very cheap to produce once it's set up.

@Tachikoma: It might very well be so. Looking at the diagram for the patent application, I see both internal and external HDD, so I don't see what use the memory card could have other than being the medium the physical games would be delivered on.

They will only do it if the result is cheap, durable, and desirable.

let me elaborate:

Cheap:
They don't have to be as cheap as blu-rays. The people who release digital-only are not actually worried about the disc-prices themselves anymore. It's the whole logistics nightmare involved that jack up the costs nowadays. The publishers who can afford to release physical could conceivably afford paying 5-10 times the price of a disc. If you buy LOTS of 32GB flash memory banks, the price will be reasonable, and you get all the benefits the medium has over optical storage.

Durable:
The games cannot be flimsy little pieces of shit like a regular flash-memory card. It's have to be built into somethign that won't snap in half and won't get lost under your nail like an SD micro. However, adding more plastic housing will jack up material, production, and transportation prices. There's a lot of tough decisions to be made if they go down this road.

Desirable:
They have to be sure that people would find it neat. Mimicking the NES cartridges would appeal to nostalgia, but would jack up production price with all the plastic and the space it would take up.
Trying to hit something closer to Game Boy/Nintendo DS would create confusion as to weather the games were really meant for a home console.
Getting it closer in size to SNES/Famicom/SuperFamicom might work, if they could make it look modern with a vibe of classiness that would appeal to both oldtimers and new players.


Anyway, that's my thoughts on it. I wouldn't rule it out as a good idea, but I'm fairly certain Nintendo won't do it.

You do realise that companies file extra patents all the time, right? Many patents end up going unused, and are simply patented just in case they end up using them, because they had come up with the idea.

More importantly, I don't think you really understand the purpose of the "Game Program", "First Basic Program", etc, in that image. They're not "this is how the data will actually be organised", they're "this is a reference we're going to specifically talk about in our patent". They are explained in a section labelled "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF NON-LIMITING EXAMPLE". In other words, this arrangement of data isn't the only one that could occur. Indeed, in their example, component 24 (AKA "First Basic Program") is a portion of the kernel of the OS! Do you really think they'd be storing part of their OS on the memory card? "In the present example embodiment, the first basic program 24 is stored in the first memory 11. The first basic program 24 is, for example, a kernel portion of an operating system. When the game apparatus 1 is started, the processor 10 first reads out the first basic program 24 from the first memory 11 and starts processing."

The very fact that they seem to suggest having programs of any sort stored on memory cards implies that they would also be able to use those same memory cards to transfer games.

Incidentally, it also has this to say:

"[0020] The game apparatus 1 according to the present example embodiment has a compatibility with another game apparatus on which an optical disk drive capable of reading out a game program from an optical disk is mounted. In other words, it is possible for the game apparatus 1 according to the present example embodiment to execute the same game program as another game apparatus on which an optical disk drive is mounted."

If you're paying attention, you'll see it's saying that a version with an optical disc slot might be provided as an alternative form of the console. It could also be interpreted as saying that there would be an ability to buy an optical disc slot as an expansion attached on top of the console. But the use of the word "compatibility" implies that they're not forsaking retail distribution, at least not entirely.

So despite your opinion, the facts don't actually support the idea that Nintendo is switching to online-only.

Those are/were ROM carts. The technology is as different and relevant as comparing a Betamax disc to a BluRay.

Erm... 3DS says hi. Also, the old style of cartridges were full circuit boards. New ones are basically flash memory.

Plus, you're talking about retail prices. And there's no need to actually use USB, since we're talking about cards and not USB keys. SD version 4 (UHS-II) gets speeds up to 4 times the current max speed of Blu-Ray drives, and that's for the standard formatting - you could get twice the data flow and twice the data storage by essentially having a card format that is kind of like two SD cards attached to each other (not that this is what I'm suggesting they'll use), kind of like having two Blu-Ray drives and two discs - you get twice the read speed due to parallelisation. They want fast read speeds, but don't need fast write speeds (or any writeability at all, for that matter). That likely provides a potential method for reducing cost, etc.

3DS cartridges go as high as 8 GB. Think about that - 8 GB cards, and yet 3DS game prices can be quite low. Perhaps someone here knows what their read speeds are? Not to mention write speeds (I know that Pokemon X/Y store pokemon data on the card, at least).