Erik rants. Today: "The PS3 is not the N64!"

[Entroper]

My point was that in the N64 days you would have a 1MB cartridge vs. a 600MB CD ... In 5 years you will (likely) have a 8GB or 16GB cartridge vs a 25GB-50GB optical format ... Regardless on what you may think, many (if not most) developers would probably choose the flash format as compared to the optical format

The first N64 games were 8 MB, and later titles had to be, I dunno, bigger. :) I think the hard limit for the format was 64 MB, though I doubt any games used carts that big. Still, your point holds, a CD is almost 100x bigger than the first N64 games (but more than 100x slower, mind you). As far as using flash memory for games, I don't think it would be such a bad idea. You can get 1 GB SD cards for $11 right now, and that's retail, meaning they cost even less to produce. Flash memory has really quick random access time, and is writable... anyone remember the 64DD? 5 years from now, 8 or 16 GB ought to be within reason, and I think that would still be plenty for a game if they aren't loading it with FMV. If every game had a few GB of writable storage at its disposal, memory cards and internal hard drives in consoles might become a thing of the past. Then again, given that MS and Sony want their consoles to do more than gaming, maybe not. I don't think the above will actually happen. But it will be interesting to see if Nintendo once again considers a non-optical storage media in 2011.