cartridges in the traditional sense are WAY more expensive than disks, and by that I'm referring to the larger old school cartridges. The large amount of plastic and size of them was expensive to manufacture and make in large quantities (much slower process than disks).
HOWEVER at this point in time debatably large flashcards ARE possibly as cheap or cheaper than disks to manufacture. Flashcards are utilized massively in a lot of different fields and at this point have pretty damn large sizes for a fairly cheap cost to create
there honestly is NO reason that large GB flashcards are not being used instead of disks at the moment. Both are already being frequently used in large scale in different fields and both are manufactured cheaply
when people say "omg cartridges are dead" they're immediately thinking of the old school large ones and seem to forget that the tiny little flashcards that slip into phones or are used as data/memory USB are entirely viable and growing in GB size yet remaining extremely small
if physical media for games remains I could easily see the flashcard gaining prominence again. Less likely to break and it would allow INCREDIBLY small packaging (companies are looking to cut costs in any way possible with physical media, less plastic and less shelf space taken up is always a positive)
