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haxxiy on 05 July 2012
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Aielyn said:
JEMC said:

@Aielyn : I'd love to go back to cartridges on home consoles as that would mean smaller, but more importantly quieter consoles. But unfortunately it won't happen.

Think about it. If Nintendo, the last of the console makers to ditch cartidges and embrace optical discs because of its drawbacks even if that ment selling the more exepensive games ever (NeoGeo not included), and the one that has always used them on handhelds has decided to use  an optical disc with WiiU is because it's not a viable option.

What will use future consoles (N8, PS5, Xbox2160) in 8 years, if they ever exist, is anyone guess.

I actually wonder if Nintendo isn't planning for their next console to use holographic discs. After all, even if InPhase Technologies has filed for bankruptcy, Nintendo still jointly holds a key patent, and thus is clearly interested in the technology. It's not ready for home console use, but give the technology another 8 years, and it'll probably be ready. Holographic discs have the potential to have faster read speeds and significantly higher capacity (they're already up to 1.6 TB), and I believe they don't have anywhere near as many moving parts, but they are still very expensive (hence why InPhase went bankrupt).

Anyway, the main point is that cards just aren't ready *yet* to be the main game distribution format for consoles. I just suspect that they'll probably end up ahead of discs again within, say, 4-5 years.

Extremely unlikely. Every disc costed thousands of dollars just a few years ago, and unless found a way to do what InPhase didn't manage to do over 10 years and $100,000,000 of R&D, and reduce disc costs by the order of a few magnitudes in a few years, and create a feasible way to manufacture and distribute them, it's impossible, and even then we'd be in N64 levels of media inconvenience. 

You have a better chance of seeing a quantum processor inside of the Wii-U... unless you meant after the Wii U? Well we don't even know if there is still going to be a market for consoles by then, or how technology is going to develop, so the point is moot. Anyways if anyone were to introduce a new media, that'd probably be Sony.