| Kyuu said: As some already suggested, instead of GKC, Nintendo should have gone with cheap and slow cards that require installation into the internal storage (just like PS5's Bluray). Not playing directly from the card won't be as frowned upon as GKC, how can anyone disagree with this? It's literally how the PS4/5 work. |
At what point does that become just "performative" physical though? Because you won't be able to actually play the game off the cartridge, on the Playstation 5 something like only 3% of their revenue are now physical games, likely in part because people know the disc is effectively useless. Obviously PC went digital only ages ago, devices like Steam Deck are digital only too.
In the Nintendo ecosystem people still think they can run games off the cartridge and it operates just the same as internal storage or flash RAM, but that wouldn't be the case any longer.
At that point, does it really matter if you're transferring data from a slow cartridge or just downloading the same exact data from your internet connection? You're doing the same thing either way, just transferring data onto the internal storage or SD Cards.
For developers to go out of their way and make physical only for Nintendo platforms and then asking them to take $16 less per physical copy is just something that is not going to fly with a lot of developers. They got a lot on their plate as is and a lot of other platforms to deal with first, a lot of them simply don't want to deal with like taking a substantially lower amount on a sale on a Nintendo platform.
I would've killed to have the option of downloadable games + internal storage back in the N64 days, it could've opened the door up to games like Resident Evil 1 and 3, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Metal Gear Solid and probably hundreds of other games to be feasible on the system back then but it wasn't viable and we were stuck with those shitty cartridges that crippled the system's library and led to long droughts of software (not to mention $70+ games which would be like $130+ today). Nintendo fans of today are lucky there are much better and much cheaper distribution options today, believe me the N64 era sucked and the system was massively held back from hundreds of games it could have otherwise ran because of the stupid cartridge format. Believe me all this "times today suck as a consumer!", lol, a lot of y'all who were too young to remember or not around period would be in for a rude awakening in the 90s. $70 USD in 1996 factoring in inflation is like $140 today! Imagine paying that for Star Wars Shadows of the Empire (I did) or Killer Instinct Gold (I did). The past is not always better.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 16 September 2025
