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Mandalore76 on 26 March 2021
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haxxiy said:
OTBWY said:

A bit much my dude. CDs and DVDs can go up to about a 100 years. As well as tapes, which are known to have exceptionally long lifespans... but it all depends on use, wear and such. So it is up to an individual to how long something can last. And if you ask me, 100 years is a long time and i'll be dead before any of my games are I reckon.

Also, transistors and such can always be replaced. They can still make the electronic parts you need to fix your cartridges (and put the rom back on the cart pretty much). Cartridges from decades ago still work as well, but again, it depends on use. Lastly, the 15 to 20 year number for Switch cartridges is based on nothing. 

The first generation of CDs is already rotting and dying.

Also, I'm not sure if we are talking about the same thing in your second paragraph? The data is physically encoded into the chip in mask ROM, the layout of the gates themselves is how the data is stored. As soon as the first bits are lost when the transistors fail, the software is corrupted and rendered useless. I'm not addressing an element on the board visible to the naked eye like a replaceable capacitor.

We also know for a fact that the Switch cartridges won't last as long as the ROM type described above because they use a proprietary kind of flash memory developed by Macronix instead of software masks. So, eventually, it will lose its charge, as it happens to flash memory, and all the 1s inside the cartridge will revert to 0s, resulting in complete data loss.

Did you read the article you quoted?  The study conducted by the Library of Congress stated that "some discs would fail in less than 25 years", but that the average lifespan is actually much longer:

The mean lifetime for the disc population as a whole was calculated to be 776 years for the discs used in this study. As demonstrated in the histograms in Figures 18 and 19, that lifetime could be less than 25 years for some discs, up to 500 years for others, and even longer.

As I've said before, the majority of my physical media will likely continue working long after I'm gone, and far longer than a closed ecosystem digital storefront.  Not only that, you went so far as to mention books in your list of physical media that is "the same if not greater risk" than buying from a digital server that might close.  I have books in my personal library that are well over 100 years old ("Great Men and Famous Women" Complete 8 Volume Set 1894), and my oldest comic book is over 50 years old (Amazing Spider-Man # 14, First Appearance of the Green Goblin, 1964).  They show wear from age of course, but there will never be a time in my lifetime that will go to open one of them and can't read them.

haxxiy said:

I don't understand, you guys thought it would remain open forever?

It's not like books, CDs, films, physical games themselves, etc. are in print forever either. And bought copies of these will inevitably decay so the risk is just the same if not greater than the servers of a digital product shutting down.