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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Cartridges or optical discs?

 

I prefer...

Cartridges 381 78.56%
 
Optical discs 104 21.44%
 
Total:485
Mr Puggsly on 09 September 2017

This gets asked all the time.

Obviously carts are ideal. Simply for durability and collection purposes.

But they cost more to produce and generally have significantly less space. Developers are already going well beyond 50GB.



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Pemalite on 09 September 2017
Mr_No said:

Whoa, whoa, whoa, chill. I never asked for you to care about me, but I feel flattered you let me know you don't. I argue against points too and I'm not afraid to be wrong.

I am chill. I am not raging either, don't make baseless assertions.

Mr_No said:

I care about you obnoxiously replying me without me wanting for it. In fact, I'm gonna say it again:

This is a forum. In a forum people generally reply to you whether you like it or not. And there is absolutely squat you can do about it.
If you do not like that, then perhaps you should ask yourself whether a forum is an appropriate avenue to express your views.

Mr_No said:

I prefer optical discs over cartrdiges because they offer more space and better sound quality

Well. You are wrong. Carts and Optical disks have the same sound quality, both uncompressed, digital, high quality audio.

Now preferring optical disks is personal opinion, something which I can completely respect.
NAND these days can scale in capacity that exceeds optical disks, that's a fact.

So in short...

* Carts have superior load times.
* Carts have superior capacity.
* Carts can have equivalent Audio/Video quality.
* Carts are more durable.
* Carts are smaller and more portable.

And that all comes down to a single caveat. Cost. That's it. Cost.

Mr_No said:

How can that get into you? Back then cartrdiges were inferior in many ways to optical discs (but not in all ways). Sure, cartridges had faster loading times and had capabilities for better 3D graphics, but discs were cheaper to produce and offered excellent video and audio quality. And those are facts.

Then the fault is your own for not elaborating on your points to a sufficient degree.

Mr_No said:


Now, you might want not to indulge in this "less than intelligent" conversation like you stated before. So don't.

As long as my replies sit within the confines of the forum/site rules... I am not obligate to adhere to your requests.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

SvennoJ on 09 September 2017
Pemalite said



Now preferring optical disks is personal opinion, something which I can completely respect.
NAND these days can scale in capacity that exceeds optical disks, that's a fact.

So in short...

* Carts have superior load times.
* Carts have superior capacity.
* Carts can have equivalent Audio/Video quality.
* Carts are more durable.
* Carts are smaller and more portable.

And that all comes down to a single caveat. Cost. That's it. Cost.

Carts have superior load time to running directly from an optical disc, however the current switch carts already fall behind 5400 rpm hdd and internal storage.
Carts can have superior storage yet are maxed at 32GB atm.
Carts can have equivalent audio/video quality, yet it's better for devs to stay under 8GB for cheaper carts, inviting more compression.
Carts are generally more durable and portable, also more easily lost or misplaced.

The cost factor is indeed the single caveat, yet it spoils all the advantages you listed. Sure you can have 128GB 275 MB/s cards, yet those cost $200 atm. Cost is a rather huge factor. In the here and now, optical discs offer more storage, less need for compression, and after installation no difference or faster loading times compared to running from a card.




Spindel on 09 September 2017

 

Spindel said:


It doesn't need to be a fully blown GPU (like the Super FX and FX 2 chips). But I could see a posibility for maybe a ARM chip (which doesn't neccesairly needs a big heatsink, if it needs any at all) fore some extra processing power for thing like maybe AI (yeah yeah I know ARM are more general purpose and not suited for AI but you get the point). Or a custom chip that helps to allow for some newer generation shader that is not supported for the aging hardware in the console for crisper graphics (even if I see new chipsets for stuff that is mostly related to under the hood calculations over graphical expandability since the graphics race is tiring and in most of the powerhouse consoles and PC I feel like the big budget games spend all the budget on visuals and forget gameplay).

Well. Such a chip would be extremely slow, orders-of-magnitude slower than the host machines processor... So the performance gains would be fairly marginal.

I mean... I would *love* for that to be a focus again, it's just not going to be all that realistic, but I guess this thread is entirely about your personal preferences, not what is realistically achievable with todays technology.

And this things kind of makes me miss the hardware constrainde consolse of the 8- and 16-bit era.

 

Don't get me wrong, it is really nice to not having to buy a game that would cost $100 just because it has a co-processor. But there is a charm that some games had chips that added voices to the sound, or enable graphical effects that was not possible with the base system.



teamsilent13 on 09 September 2017

I am a console gamer, but I have been digitally downloading all my games for years. 



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fatslob-:O on 09 September 2017

Personally speaking, I don't see the issue with either ...

Both are just tools used to store content ...



Mr_No on 09 September 2017
Pemalite said:
Mr_No said:

Whoa, whoa, whoa, chill. I never asked for you to care about me, but I feel flattered you let me know you don't. I argue against points too and I'm not afraid to be wrong.

I am chill. I am not raging either, don't make baseless assertions.

Mr_No said:

I care about you obnoxiously replying me without me wanting for it. In fact, I'm gonna say it again:

This is a forum. In a forum people generally reply to you whether you like it or not. And there is absolutely squat you can do about it.
If you do not like that, then perhaps you should ask yourself whether a forum is an appropriate avenue to express your views.

Mr_No said:

I prefer optical discs over cartrdiges because they offer more space and better sound quality

Well. You are wrong. Carts and Optical disks have the same sound quality, both uncompressed, digital, high quality audio.

Now preferring optical disks is personal opinion, something which I can completely respect.
NAND these days can scale in capacity that exceeds optical disks, that's a fact.

So in short...

* Carts have superior load times.
* Carts have superior capacity.
* Carts can have equivalent Audio/Video quality.
* Carts are more durable.
* Carts are smaller and more portable.

And that all comes down to a single caveat. Cost. That's it. Cost.

Mr_No said:

How can that get into you? Back then cartrdiges were inferior in many ways to optical discs (but not in all ways). Sure, cartridges had faster loading times and had capabilities for better 3D graphics, but discs were cheaper to produce and offered excellent video and audio quality. And those are facts.

Then the fault is your own for not elaborating on your points to a sufficient degree.

Mr_No said:


Now, you might want not to indulge in this "less than intelligent" conversation like you stated before. So don't.

As long as my replies sit within the confines of the forum/site rules... I am not obligate to adhere to your requests.

No. The fault is yours for making a baseless assertion assuming I was referring to gaming as a whole instead of gaming as a whole. "Oh, you should've been more clearer, so it's your fault." If my comment wasn't clear enough on the caveats of the cartridges and the era they pertained to, then it is your fault for not correlating the information and joining the pieces. You should've asked before jumping to a conclusion. I don't have to digest things for you. 

I'm frankly tired of going in circles with this conversation. I expressed my opinion, you didn't care for it at first, then respected it later on... If you still want to make your right to express yourself worth something, be my guest. I'm not gonna reply anymore to this or any of your comments. Adhere to that.



Ganoncrotch on 09 September 2017

It is worth noting that the current consoles "carts" such as in the Vita and Switch are completely different to the Carts which existed back on the SNES era of games, they are no longer a daughterboard to the console in the way the SNES used the carts, it's basically a glorified SD card slot with a custom shell, because of this you will not see things like hardware components being added to the Cards used in newer consoles, keep in mind the Super FX chip was effectively a new GPU added into the SNES on the Riser card which was the Cartridge, this simply isn't possible with the way the flash storage of Vita/Switch is attached to the systems.

That said... I always prefer carts, of any kind, they're just more... solid and unique feeling than a CD/DVD



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Ganoncrotch on 09 September 2017
fatslob-:O said:
Personally speaking, I don't see the issue with either ...

Both are just tools used to store content ...

I was about to say that disc's can be dissappointing in the area's of being able to bring you awful taste experiences that the Switch has done... but then I think back to Gran Turismo 2 and how its disc smelt of burning rubber when you were playing that game... So they both are capable of bringing extra taste / smell to the gamer as well....



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Alby_da_Wolf on 09 September 2017

Cartridges for portables, optical disc with installation on HDD or SDD for home consoles and PC.



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