I could see solid state media being used as the physical medium, seeing as the 3DS cards will be able to go up to 8GB... the console would need just a little bit more.

You could buy one from Amazon used for $20 plus 4 dollars for shipping.

On Topic:  They will not have GCN support for their next system.  Like some have said before they only go so far with backward compatibility.  That is the reason why I bought the DS Lite instead of the DSi when I decided to buy the DS again.  I wanted the GBA port since I just got 2 of the GBA Fire Emblems to play (my 20 plus GBA games also).  I expect Wii backwards compatibility but if they didn't support that then I wouldn't really care.  I would just keep my Wii plugged into the component cable and their next system plugged into HDMI (my tv only has one component cable input so I suppose the Wii owns that input for a long time).

I also would like to see console games sold on solid state media like the 3DS.

Less load times, more durable, more compact, etc.

And they increase in storage capacity over the life of the console. Current Wii games are either 4.7 GB or 8.7GB capacity. With games on a solid state media, the next gen console could start at 4 GB and by the end of the console's life grow to 64GB while retaining the solid state media benefits.

But there are also dozens of PC titles which use over 10GB. Getting past 10GB is completely normal nowadays even on PC. Age of Conan is probably biggest PC title and it used over 30GB (no wonder it was never released on 360). Download isn't the same as actual game size after decompression. Even World of Warcraft requires 25GB now, according to Blizzard.

Not surprising, they'll be using physical media for years to come. I would be more shocked if they used holographic discs but the costs have to keep going down for that to happen.

Can cartridges still be used by today's standards?  Can it hold all that data?  If it can I would love to see them return so as to eliminate load times in game and out of game (booting up the console and game).

Unfortunately I don't think this article gives any wrothy information of whether Wii 2 will support physical media, or if it will but at least shift towards some downloadable AAA titles.  This is just one paragraph by European Rep who is saying that mobile downloads don't effect traditional game software.

I think 3DS is going to be Nintendo's guniea pig as fas as telling whether downloadable titles are a risky idea or not.  Although I think they took keen notice of the effect on DSi, it was a branch off of DS, and so not everyone who liked DS had a DSi.  Digital media for games has only just gotten it's foot in the door.  It has a long way to go before it integrates into the mainstream like digital music did.  But in the far future I do see it.

good.

I think that this was pretty damn obvious whether we explicitly got word of it or not, but confirmation is nice to have anyway. Thank you for promoting the right medium for games, Nintendo!

DS cards have a max capacity of 4 GB.
SDHC cards (Wii and DSi use these for external storage while the 3DS will use them for game media) have a max capacity of 32 GB.
SDXC cards have a capacity starting at 32 GB all the way up to a theoretical limit of 2 TB's.

So SD cards already just about equal a single sided , single layered DVD.  SDHC cards are greater than single sided Blu-ray discs and SDHX cards will eventually have capacities that rival todays HDD's.

The issues are costs.  While costs have come down greatly the past few years and will continue to drop at a good rate, they are still a good deal more costly per card than a single DVD or Blu-ray disc.  But thankfully nowhere near as much as a cost gap as the old disc vs cartridge days.

Only a rare game will need more than 20GB of this I am certain. Only the art assets will scale towards the next generation and this is tempered by the fact that games will make increasing use of real time global illumination as soon as performance allows it as well as procedural generation. The texture budget of Fallout 3 for instance is only 2.3GB so even if you increased that 5 fold you're still not even hitting 20GB if you next genify that one title.