Yes, but mostly on japanese developers. I like the idea of SD cards replacing CD-DVDs, but it would only bring the western developers back if they were able to manufacture 64gb or 128gb cards cheaply. GTA V is more than 50gb on PS4, Wolfenstein TNO is around 44gb on PS4... Imagine the space some games will need in the future. Japanese games don't need that much space, but big AAA western titles would have a harder time fitting their games on 64gb cards.

Then again, most western developers abandoned Nintendo a long time ago, so I don't know how much of a loss this would be.

No way. Unless they do some portable SSD or something which would be quite expensive still in such a small form factor to store big AAA nintendo games. No way.

First of all: I doubt it will happen.
Second: I think for a while, that cartridges in modern days would be better for console than optical media.

But look at the details. Wikipedia claims, that 3DS-cartridges can hold up to 8GiB of data. Bluray hold 25 GiB (single-layer) or 50 GiB (dual-layer) of data. While Bluray obviously holds a lot more data, a decent step in technology can double the capacity of cartridges to 16 GiB, while keep prices low. That is still less than BD, but I doubt most games even break 16 GiB these days. I doubt PS5 and XBox -100 will have a storage medium with bigger sizes than bluray. So cartridges may be able to hold most games.

Still, some games have detailed textures and lot of content. The next-gen GTA, Final Fantasy, Battlefield, Skyrim and so on might need more storage. But does these games hit Nintendo consoles if they provide enough storage? So no loss at all.

Cartridges hold some obvious advantages, especially no moving parts that leads to more reliability and less noise. Also they can not only hold game data, but also save-games.

So, while I think Nintendo won't do it, I think it would be great.

You're not thinking fourth dimensionally.

Maybe it's expensive now, but in 2 years it will be way cheaper.

Walmart sells Micro SD cards with 32GB for 12$.
Im assumeing they make abit of profit doing so.

I think its possible to use "Cartridges" if nintendo wanted.

I agree, this would most likely benefit Japanese devs the most (IF region locking goes away, and it actually seems like Nintendo is thinking about it, no?). But, on the other hand, if you really want your 50GB on a Nintendo device, all you have to do is make it on a bigger SD-card. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. But I think we all know that Western devs simply won't do that since it'll cost a little bit more to produce...

That's exactly the reason. And do you disagree, seeing what they have done with the WiiU after they had the Wii before?

There's just on thing that a bit of a pain in the ass though: you'll have to download EVERYTHING twice; once for your HC and once for your HH. Downloading patches twice, downloading DLC's twice... that's a bit cumpersome. Hopefully Nintendo will implement some sort of "Automatically download this content for ALL your NNID connected devices at the same time". That way you can download the DLC on your HC and the same content will get installed on your HH at the same time when it's in sleep mode. The second problem then becomes available space in the HH device: that shit's gonna get filled crazy fast! It'll be hugely expansive to have loads of DLC on your HH, or if not hugely expansive you'll probably need quite a few more extra SD-cards to save all that content on, which will become annoying when you have to swtch cards all the time depending on what games you play

Assuming every game would come to both the home-console and the handheld version of the NX, I'd say there's one important question then.

What would be more expensive? Solely producing generic large SD-style cards up to say 64GB that would work on both devices, or making both smaller SD-cards up to 16GB for the handheld and BR-based discs up to whatever GB for the home-console additionally.

In the first case, publishers only need to produce only one SKU of a game to be sold across a variety of NX-forms, reducing the need to manage supply for each version of hardware while the second case, would have the publisher make at least two sets of retail packages with all added disadvantages. Two sets of different plastic cases, two different storage mediums for one game with one maybe even needing to be given away for free if there's cross-buy (which seems logical with the NX-concept), said more complicated management of supply and not to be underestimated, larger storage capacity needed in warehouses and shelf-space in stores.

Of course, there is some math that needs to be done, but I think it might end up being cheaper to produce a single more expensive medium than produce two different seemingly cheaper ones. I don't think this is such a stupid idea.

Vita kind of fucked up the optical media future, if the vita was a successful successor to the PSP I can imagine optical media on Handhelds would become a thing. Same way how PS1's success drove optical media on Consoles.