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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Prediction: "Cartridges" will return for the Nintendo home console

Whoever has subscribed to the "Fusion" idea, pretty much takes this as a given.

Whatever the next card format that'll be used by the NX handheld, will be used for the home version. The only reason Nintendo ever got in the disc business in the first place was cost/space issue, and it seems the time is ripe to ditch optical drives for Ninty's next gen hw. Again - for Nintendo the HH/HC gap is closing, with the NX HH making a big jump (due mobile tech advancements) and the NX home version will inch forward, not too different from GC-Wii.

The only question is the size of these game cards, IMO as low as 32 and high as 64 gb.



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t3mporary_126 said:
If this means I can insert the sd card into the device, turn it on, and the opening title of the game starts immediately, then I'm all for sd cards.

And skip a full two minutes of the developer's, publisher's, sub developer's, tertiary developer, angel investor, music composer, engine lessor, platform holder, utilities creators, and marketer's logos? Balderdash!

RolStoppable said:

Nintendo's dilemma is that handhelds are more popular than home consoles in Japan while in the rest of the world it is the other way around.

I'm not convinced this is actually true, to be honest, at least not for Nintendo. I know the media coverage in the West focuses almost exclusively on home consoles, but generation by generation Nintendo's handhelds have sold more than their home consoles. This is true even in North America, where home consoles are the strongest. Admittedly I don't have the profit figures of handhelds vs. home consoles at hand, so it's certainly possible that they still make more money off home consoles than handhelds, but I'm skeptical of that. I'm reminded of the GBA and Gamecube era, where even the GBA's brief era was sufficiently profitable to overwrite the Gamecube's pathetic existence.

spemanig said:

The console will stay CDs while the handheld will just be digital.

Was the lesson of the PSP Go so ephemeral then?

Darwinianevolution said:
Also, I'm sure that route would lead to a lot of ways to piracy, just like the DS (R4 cards).

It hasn't been an issue for the 3DS, right?

ArchangelMadzz said:
Same way how PS1's success drove optical media on Consoles.

Rol already addressed the rest, so I'll just say that's a pretty incorrect or revisionist view on history.

thatguymarco said:
Neh, who cares, you guys will all buy it anyway.

Your thoughts are fascinating and your input was worth reading.

Burning Typhoon said:
My only fear would be losing the game. Or accidentally breaking it. These aren't the size of our carts from yesteryears.

The handhelds have had similar, or smaller, carts for a while now, and it hasn't proven to be a problem notwithstanding the greater mobility.

JRPGfan said:



I think the idea of haveing the same "medium" for both the handheld and the consol, is brilliant.

"take your games with you on the go".

(no compromises, its the same game, on the handheld as on the consol. To me thats a huge selling point)

I'm not a fan. I also feel compelled to point out that this was the thrust of the Vita, almost in its entirety. Small sample size, sure, but I take the vehement market rejection as evidence that the mass market would be unenthused at best by this.



I miss catridges



Probably.

Flash memory is getting cheaper, 3DS sized cartridges that are 16GB and 32GB (the same size as a Blu-Ray disc) will likely be cheap enough soon, disc drive is going the way of the dinosaur.



So Nintendo knew what they were doing all along:O

Just kidding of course, technology changes and back then Optical Disc storage was IT. Now that carts can do so much more now for a smaller price, I see this as a possibility. But, something tells me piracy would be a lot easier to execute. That's Nintendo's worst enemy. Not Sony, not Sega, but piracy. And man, is it easy to do these days.



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You'll never get around piracy.

Even with proprietary media you can just hack the console to dump images with the consoles own drive. Almost every media format proprietary or otherwise is dumped within the first week of introduction long before the ability to execute those images on the original hardware is discovered.

Pirating has less to do with what kind of media you are using and having a ROM and more to do with being able to load and execute it on the console without extensive or impractical modification.

I like to use HDCP over HDMI as an example. The whole system is encrypted, but at the end of the chain inside the display is a RGB LVDS signal driving raw pixel data to the panel controller where you can still tap the raw uncompressed unencrypted data and encode it back to h.264 or whatever.

 

Nintendo doesn't have to worry about piracy.  Nintendo and retro and collecting is such a HUGE thing right now.  Just look at second hand prices for many Nintendo games as old as NES and as new as Wii U.  People pay through the nose for original complete copies.  And most of Nintendo's market is either these hardcore Nintendo fanatics that want sealed original black label copies in triplicate of everything Nintendo makes from first party Wii U titles to amiibos, and casual families who wouldn't know how to hack a console to pirate games anyway - non tech savvy mothers who care about things like warranties and service support.  

The majority of people who pirate are people who are OCD hoarders who want everything if it's free but don't have the means or desire to pay for originals in the first place.  

The whole piracy thing has been overblown by greed in the industry and unrealistic predictions and expections of what a publisher expects or thinks they deserve for a release. Publishers like Activition and EA especially who are run by people who believe in unsustainable business practices relying on record breaking sales indefinitely year after year.  

We see this all the time.  "Oh Call of Duty only sold 8 million copies in 2 minutes.  Last month's release sold 8.01 million copies in the same time, we wanted 20 million copies. PANIC! FAILURE! MUST BE PIRACY!" You cannot break sales records forever, least of all in the stale tired worn out over produced market you yourself created. The market gets saturated eventually.  There are only a finite number of people on the planet to buy your product for example.  Expecting to double sales every iterration from 10 million to 20 million to ...... 500 billion units shipped... yeah that is never going to happen.  The gravy train is going to stop eventually and reach a static value at the market saturation point.

Piracy is a scapegoat invented for and motivated by the desire to constantly increase revenue streams without end.  The end goal isn't to "stop piracy". It's to remove your freedom of choice and private property and consumer rights.  It's to completely lock down and monopolize control of the property you purchased for maximum monetization by publishers who want to inundate you with their shovelware and vendor locked in subscription models in every aspect of your life. Piracy is just a boogieman to force feed the public and legislators into accepting the crippling and invasive DRM technology and anti consumer business practices used to achieve that agenda.

 The number of people with the tech savvy and desire to hack their console is an extreme minority.  I'd wager over 95% of average consumers still care about things like warranties and rely on service centers to change the batteries in their remote controls and oil in their cars.  These people aren't installing mod chips in their consoles and sitting in front of their PCs ripping ROMS all day.

Even with pirating it's doubtful that Nintendo would have a problem with selling out of anything they make no matter how many they produce with the current ferver.  Anything first party Nintendo prints money.  You can download the N64 ROM of Majora's Mask and practically play it in a browser on a $50 PC these days.  Yet this didn't stop the 3DS re-release of the game, the limited edition N3DS XL console, the limited skull kid figure box set , and the collector edition hardcover guide books (that aren't even Nintendo) from selling out world wide in mere seconds while 100s of thousands of angry customers walked away empty handed or fell victim to ebay scalpers.

Nintendo's problem isn't piracy. Nintendo's ONLY freakin concern right now should be making enough stuff to sell when 100s of thousands of customers who missed a 3 second preorder window at 2 AM are camping out and waiting in line for 8+ hours in rain and snow to throw fistfulls of money at Nintendo but can't get the products they want.

It's gotten to the point that ebay resellers are even using bots to monopolize pre-orders for fucks sake.  Please tell me again how piracy is hurting Nintendo more than Nintendo hurts itself?



Ultrashroomz said:
Nah, cartridges are a thing of the past now.


As is Nintendo. *eyes roll*

- M, Carl



Hunting Season is done...

Wyrdness said:
DanneSandin said:
As far as I can remember Iwata's statements about their future consoles he's said they're aiming for a unified OS, something akin to iOS where you have the iPone and iPad. Did he really indicate that the devices would share the same games? Let's remember that iPhones and iPads both have their own exclusives....


He didn't but the were whispers or some kind of patent of a concept called Fusion with one hardware unit accomdating both Handheld and home markets, the IOS style concept was mentioned by him. 

Yes, I'm aware of the Fusion rumours, but except from that I don't think there's clear, strong indications that Nintendo's gonna make both devices play the same games; rather, it might be a lot more easier to port between the two devices.



I'm on Twitter @DanneSandin!

Furthermore, I think VGChartz should add a "Like"-button.

RolStoppable said:
DanneSandin said:
As far as I can remember Iwata's statements about their future consoles he's said they're aiming for a unified OS, something akin to iOS where you have the iPone and iPad. Did he really indicate that the devices would share the same games? Let's remember that iPhones and iPads both have their own exclusives....

What he said most recently is this:

Iwata said:

Your question also included the "current notion of thinking about home consoles and handheld devices." When it comes to how dedicated game systems are being played, the situations have become rather different, especially between Japan and overseas. Since we are always thinking about how to create a new platform that will be accepted by as many people around the world as possible, we would like to offer to them "a dedicated video game platform with a brand new concept" by taking into consideration various factors, including the playing environments that differ by country. This is all that I can confirm today.

Which to me means that games that can be shared between a home console and a handheld will indeed be shared. This doesn't rule that either device can still receive its own exclusives, but we already know that it's feasible for a lot of Nintendo IPs to exist in a very similar form on a home console and a handheld. The chances that a new platform will be accepted by as many people as possible increases with a steady flow of software, and that can be achieved by sharing games between devices whenever it is feasible. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS can be considered a glimpse of what is to come.

This could also simply mean that they'll make it a lot easier to port between the two consoles; you mention Smash Bros 3DS/Wii U, and that's almost two different games. I'm not even sure they're running on the same engine. Maybe they're aiming at using the same engine for both devices to shorten development time, but that doesn't mean you'll have the same game on both systems, or that you'll be able to actually continue your play session on either devices.

I hope you're right, I'd love for this concept to be true! But the question is, which scenario would Nintendo make the most money from? Make one game to switch between two devices, release one game on two different devices with no save transfer without double dipping (essentially porting the games between the devices), or have the same engine working on both consoles but developing different games for each device.

All three scenarios have their pros and cons, but which one makes Nintendo the most money?



I'm on Twitter @DanneSandin!

Furthermore, I think VGChartz should add a "Like"-button.

DanneSandin said:

Yes, I'm aware of the Fusion rumours, but except from that I don't think there's clear, strong indications that Nintendo's gonna make both devices play the same games; rather, it might be a lot more easier to port between the two devices.


The are strong advantages for Nintendo if it is executed well, more then just porting:

- One userbase to focus on with out having to balance focus on two platforms.

- Costs of manufacturing this one platform would be overall reduced from developing two platforms, the platform itself may cost a lot more to produce then any other individual platform Nintendo has made but the would not be any second platform costs.

- It would solve a major issue for Nintendo and that is the divide in taste between Japan and other regions, Rol touched on this before on how portables in Japan are dominating while consoles have declined while in the west it's vice versa, for a company like Nintendo who have to focus on both portables and consoles this is a problematic situation. A fusion platform helps in that all consumers whether handheld or console would be on the one platform.

- Migration of consumers from handheld to console and vice versa would be much easier, people would still get what they normally go for when they buy the platform only this time they'd have access to a console/handheld library as well.

- With Nintendo expanding and adding non gaming specific hardware like QOL it would make sense to reduce confusion by having a fusion platform handle all their gaming.

- A fusion platform would also have one indirect effect, they'd have to push it with everything as it would be their sole pillar for gaming, unlike the Wii U where they dilly dallied with no market for the first 2 years they'd would be forced to take things more seriously like they did when the 3DS had issues.

I doubt a fusion platform will show up next gen but I also have the feeling that the gen after that when the software platform and all is sort out that a fusion like platform could be a reality.