Cartridges -> disk -> Cartridges come back??

[dharh]

WilliamWatts said:

dharh said:
I highly doubt they are going to go for kiosks. It will be either DD and/or rom carts, just like previous gens that had carts. What would be the benefit aside from faster loading times? The cons on the other hand are quite high. Using writable carts means no 'physical' medium in the traditional sense. Who cares about a cart that can get overwritten on a whim? The costs for a single game can be double what we pay for a single game. Cart + buying the game from a kiosk? No thanks.

The thing about optical drives vs carts in the past is that discs gave developers more options. More space, cost less. Not all game developers need 25-50 GB that a BRD might provide, but some might. If a developer _wants_ to create an epic large game, they can't with carts. And no multiple cart games would be way too costly: $100+ per game.

A properly designed console and game can limit the amount of load times with discs based games.

Consoles these days need HDDs anyway. My Fallout 3 save folder has 100+ save files. I've got tons of movies and downloaded games. I cant imagine how any of this would be possible with the limited space options provided by the Wii or even a rom-cart based system that eschewed a HDD.

Aside from faster loading times? Easier storage, unbreakable, quiet, reliable, smaller console. Oh and cartridges would allow for BOTH direct purchase of a ready made unit and direct download onto a rewriteable cartridge.

A developer can make an epic long game with 3GB if you take Borderlands for an example. I don't exactly see where they need 25GB if they aren't padding for loading speed or using lossless 7.1 sound with 5 different language tracks and even then they usually don't take up more than 10GB. Looking at the Xbox 360 install charts most games don't even hit the 6.8GB limit and considering a normal distribution very few would go over 8GB if they could. The only exception would be the 'epic' JRPGs and the only thing epic about them is their extensive use of FMV.

A properly designed console and game at this point is Optical drive + mechanical HDD, which is about a third of the bill of materials for a $250 console. Consoles need gigs of space, but they don't 'need' much more than 10's of GB.

Wha? Easier storage? In what way is it easier? If you would stop jump up and down on your discs maybe that wouldn't be a problem. You know, most of what you add as pros seem kinda trivial. I'll get to your last point in a minute.

Borderlands isn't epic, though I grant you it _is_ a type of game that would fit well with this limited system. It's not that all developers need 25GB of space, its that some developers might want to make such a game, rare as that may be. If they aren't using the entire disc space, then truly why do they have massive load times? Seems to me it has nothing to do with the disc, and more to do with a inefficient game engine. Epic JRPGs are the only thing I really care about.

You've got the costs of the optical drive and HDD way too high. The BRD drive and 120 GB HD atm cost <$150, which is really reasonable. But for the sake of argument we could go with a DVD drive and the cost would be <$100 or a small hard drive and make it even less. Which probably starts to the approach the cost of the cart slot. Especially one that would be capable of both read and write and is of a proprietary format.

If on the other hand they did go with SD cards that might drop the costs since the infrastructure has long been already entrenched but opens up some problems. More piracy and costs per cart are still many times the cost per disc. Even a blank BRD is pennies compared to the dollars per SDHC to manufacture.

The costs are a big part of the problem. If you can package the costs into a one time purchase (say the disc drive and hard drive) its much less costly to individual consumers in the long run. If on the other hand the main cost is the cart, someone is going to have to eat that cost, and they have to do it every single purchase.

I still think even with a cart based system, it would be less expensive to the consumer to push the storage of save files and DD games/movies onto a HDD.