A million different surveys have been done over the years about this and the result is always the same and that is physical is preferred by the vast majority over digital. Considering how weak Nintendo's presense is in the console market right now it would be suicide to go digital only. And what's wrong with having a choice? Why does it have to strictly digital only. The consumer in no way benefits from this.

when you look at file sizes for games that are popular, like CoD and GTA5...these files are HUGE. GTA5 is at least 60GB. Now, people think that just because they see a $30 64 GB SD Card, that it would be a no brainer for developers. But Nintendo would have to use their own form of the SD Card that allows certain features of their console. Flash memory is cheap, don't get me wrong. But it's the unknown that will get to 3rd party devs. Once we see more of the console, if this is what Nintendo is aiming for, then maybe we can speculate more.

3DS is doing great with a card format and I would love to see a triumphant return to card based gaming. True, load times would be faster but it all comes down to, what will be the sizes for these flash memory cards that the NX might use. By its release, AAA, photo realistic games will probably need 100GB of space.

Really there are workarounds to that too, if a game is larger than 32GB, it can simply just install the rest of the data to the HDD. And before people lose their crap, this is commonplace for PS4/X1 games, every second game practically requires a "download" (as in content that wasn't on the disc) when you first put the disc in. 

But I think even 64GB cards will be very cheap for Nintendo when ordered in bulk, probably like $3-$5 a card today and even less as time goes on. 

I don't think the NX will have that much third party support anyway where it's such a concern. It'll be better support than the Wii U for sure unless they do something really stupid, but I think it'll mostly be Japanese devs (the ones that currently support the 3DS) supporting it and a few Western devs. 

Great argument! Believe me, I'm all for the return of cards. It just seems like Discs are becoming a thing of the past. It's so ironic isn't it? Discs kicked out cartridges and now they've come back with a vengeance! You're right, it will cost Nintendo little if they buy in bulk and size issues aren't a problem as you mentioned, an HDD could be implemented like the PS and XB currently do. I mean, if the console takes cards as the format, I see this being a very smart decision for the NX. It would be modern and old school at the same time and offer the same way to play games only on a smaller and much more capable format.

3rd party support should at least be feisable on NX. 3rd party devs should be able to produce a game for NX without worrying about drumming up a team for ports. I know the games won't really sell that well on NX given the user base of Nintendo consoles, me included (but I still love 3rd party), but at least NX would not be left out, thus justifying a purchase for Nintendo's iconic IP along with whatever is out there. Truly, Nintendo couldn't lose at that point. They might not win back the PS players but the would still be in a winning position.

First Basic Program reffers to IC level code which would be encryption on the savedata, just the same as the Gamecube and N64 used. Second basic program would be file management code for handling files within its memory.

And yes it does look like, from the patent documentation that a seperate optical drive unit will be usable but that doesnt change the fact that the console itself does not have the ability to read disks or game data from external memory cards, the wording does not suggest a version WITH an optical drive at all, it suggests an external device seperate from the main console.

The FBP on memory card being a portion of the OS makes no difference to its operation as a memory card as the memory card would need to communicate with the OS directly to handle crypto and validity checking, ndeed if they go the same way as the N64, GC and PS2 the memory card data would be accessible in the boot chain for service level code execution (Recovery, diagnostics).

But hey, I don't personally care what you want to believe or how you want to intepret things, if it makes you sleep better at night more power to you.

3DS cartridge holds 128MB - 8GB.  Good luck fitting modern games on that buddy, oh and they will read as fast as a CD-ROM.

Here we have a Card Slot linked with Basic Program 1 and Basic Program 2. Assuming it's a console, the most basic feature would be a game. As we have two programs, that means we can expect games to come with two versions. This practically straight up tells us everything about the fusion concept. Two games in a cartridge. Physical cross-play.

I sure hope that's sarcasm.

Arguments, honey.

Or you wanna bet?

I bet a permaban.