Regardless of how much the price falls  flash memory will always be far more expensive than blank BR disc.

A quick check show me I will pay around £15.00 for a 16GB of any given flash format. For £15.00 I can get a blank 50GB BR-Disc and pay much less for a smaller capacity disc.

From that you can make an educated guess at the production cost and what gives you a bigger bang for your buck.

This is one of the reasons manufacturers drop cartridges in the first place although they do have advantages.

At a time when keeping costs down is vital flash will add to the cost of the game.  If the article is correct then Nintendo also thinks Discs are the best option.

I hope it's true, and I hope it plays movies, because I really want Blu-ray to take off. It is just so much better than DVD, and I like having physical media rather than download my movies. That said, I doubt this will happen...

It would be nice if they went back to cartridges just for the loading times. You can get 8gb sdhc cards for as low as 9 dollars. But that's still a lot of extra cost (in materials and construction) compared to stamping a blu-ray or dvd. It would raise the retail price of the games by about 10 dollars I think. And it still needs a drive to maintain backwards compatibility.

If they go with blu-ray it will be a faster drive. ps3 only has 2x speed while you can get 12x speed drives already. A 6x speed for the wii2 would be feasible.

It would be nice if you can enable blu-ray movie playback by paying a one time fee. Give the consumer the choice to upgrade by downloading a software update to activate blue-ray playback. Similar to how it is now when you enable wma playback on ps3, connect to the internet to download the codec from microsoft. It probably won't happen though, since the industry will be afraid someone will hack the activation and distribute the software update for free.

You forget diminishing returns. For most people a certain quality of graphics is already good enough. That number of people will only get larger next gen, already this gen we had a bunch of people satisfied with PS2 levels.

Also, for the style of character Nintendo makes, it doesn't make sense to have the graphics be a lot better. To a degree, the characters will look the same as they would on much more powerful systems.

They will economize like $3...not $50.

Oops. I meant those who are writing all these rumor articles.

*Looks at viper's profuile sees nothing but nintendo games* oh i see ;) no point arguing is there ;D I asume all those gamers and "developers" (rofl) are not ps3 or 360 user

If we asume that sony is correct that next gen wont start for the HD consols until 2014 or 15 then 3 gtx 580's isnt that impossible to see. If u read the origonal thread about the UE4 qwith the tech demo u will find many epople (with alot of expiraicne in PC gameing) saying that it was actualy not that far away having graphics card that powerfull at afordable prices. The only problem they have is the heat which is quickly imporiving (look at the gtx 570. incredably powerfull hard that can run crysis maxed out at 70C).

So dont acuse me of being the only one who things the jump will be just as if not bigger when there is an entire thread with people saying the same thing ;)

I hope they use UMD instead just for the Lulz...Haha

I mentioned it several times in one of the other threads.  I'd really love to see them take that route. 

I'm looking from a different perspective.   No mechanical drive.  Mecahnical drives are the leading cause of all console errors in Nintendo home consoles since the introduction fo the GC.  Granted it is still fewer than other consoles.   By going back to cartrdiges you eliminate a huge error prone component.

Further still you gain the ability to read and write, much faster access speeds, faster transfer speeds, a quiter and cooler system, lower FEC and UL fees, etc....   Sounds like a decent trade off to me.  And if the ystem can do procedrual texturing, you won't need masssive capacity anyway.

We can look at the PS3 and X360's release period and compare them to to the power of 3 top of the line GPU's from 3-4 years prior.   PS3 wouldn't match the fill rate of 3 high end cards from 2002-2003.  Not even close.

As for me being a Nintendo fan, it's irrelevant.  I co-own a media network with 35,000 members (90% PS3 fans) and being media I speak with developers all the time.   And my statement was not an accusation which would be a suggestion that you inteionally did somethign wrong.  But merely an observation that still to this point, you are the only one I've spoken to that believes the jump from PS3/X360 to the next generation will be larger than the jump from PS2/Xbox to current generation.   You might want to talk with some publishers about how the feel about their budgets skyrocketing again.