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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Cartridges or optical discs?

 

I prefer...

Cartridges 381 78.56%
 
Optical discs 104 21.44%
 
Total:485
Pemalite on 05 September 2017
VGPolyglot said:
d21lewis said:
I've never had an issue with cartridges not working (well, not since the NES days...). I've had disc drive issues with PS1, PS2, and Xbox 360.

My Master System has had trouble reading cartridges for some reason, I still don't know why.

Get some rubbing alcohol, clean your carts and the cartridge slot on your console.

AlfredoTurkey said:
Carts and by carts, I mean Atari 2600 through N64 carts. What we're using now are tiny little memory cards. I'd rather have discs than those.

As to why? They're more durable and they almost instantly load. There's also just something infinitely more enjoyable about collecting them.

Well. After the Nintendo 64, carts were restricted to only handhelds.
And that means size needed to be reduced for portability reasons.

Aeolus451 said:
I rather them just go to normal sized USB sticks. Between cartridges and discs, I'll go with discs because they can be repaired and it's cheaper.

Carts can also be repaired.

Good luck repairing an optical disk that is suffering from oxidization of the data layer, which was extremely common in the PS1 days.
The optical disk laser also degrades over time, many of the early disk-based systems are suffering from that very issue... Yet a SNES will still run like the day it was made.

SvennoJ said:
Loading times are irrelevant as HDDs are faster than (affordable) cartridges anyway.

Mechanical disks do have terrible random reads/writes though.

dharh said:

If SONY wanted to they could upgrade the firmware to make it so.  Although SONY and Philips are joint creators of the CD-DA format I believe SONY would have to pay Philips a certain amount per PS4 out there to do this (its probably pennies per though), though I am no expert.  However, I suspect the real reason for not wasting time paying for licensing and put time into making the software is that Audio CD's are at this point antiquated to the point that _new_ hardware is not necessary.  Music Streaming has almost completely taken over.

Do you have a link for this claim?

curl-6 said:

To be fair, can you pop a PS1/PS2/PS3 disc in a PS4 and play it?

Nope. Xbox One can read all optical disks though.... From CD to UHD BluRay.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

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VGPolyglot on 05 September 2017
Pemalite said:


Good luck repairing an optical disk that is suffering from oxidization of the data layer, which was extremely common in the PS1 days.
The optical disk laser also degrades over time, many of the early disk-based systems are suffering from that very issue... Yet a SNES will still run like the day it was made.

I never had PS1 games with that problem, so I'm not sure if it can be called extremely common.



SvennoJ on 05 September 2017
curl-6 said:
SvennoJ said:
CD / DVD / Blu-ray / UHD can all be read by the same reader, cartridges are not backwards compatible.

To be fair, can you pop a PS1/PS2/PS3 disc in a PS4 and play it?

You can pop a 360 disc in the one and play it, soon perhaps also certain original xbox discs.
You can pop ps1 and ps2 discs in an original ps3 and play it.
You can pop a GC disc in a Wii and play it.
You can pop a Wii disc in a WiiU and play it.

You will never be able to pop a disc in the Switch, nor a 3ds cartridge btw.



curl-6 on 05 September 2017
SvennoJ said:
curl-6 said:

To be fair, can you pop a PS1/PS2/PS3 disc in a PS4 and play it?

You can pop a 360 disc in the one and play it, soon perhaps also certain original xbox discs.
You can pop ps1 and ps2 discs in an original ps3 and play it.
You can pop a GC disc in a Wii and play it.
You can pop a Wii disc in a WiiU and play it.

You will never be able to pop a disc in the Switch, nor a 3ds cartridge btw.

By the same token though you can put a DS cart in a 3DS, a GBA cart in a DS, a GB cart in a GBA.



Smartie900 on 05 September 2017

Cartridges. Absolutely no reason to use Optical Discs any more.



 

 

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SegataSanshiro on 05 September 2017

Carts. More durable. Less of an issue with load times. Easier to store. Not as fragile. I have had times where I dropped a cart but never worried. a CD ROM game or DVD fell down and got some scratches. Thankfully still worked but have had a music CD fall out of its case once and the disc was ruined. With a system like Switch using carts, you don't need to worry about huge installs. One thing I hate about my PS4 is managing the HDD. I'd take memory cards over this crap.



Pemalite on 05 September 2017
VGPolyglot said:
Pemalite said:


Good luck repairing an optical disk that is suffering from oxidization of the data layer, which was extremely common in the PS1 days.
The optical disk laser also degrades over time, many of the early disk-based systems are suffering from that very issue... Yet a SNES will still run like the day it was made.

I never had PS1 games with that problem, so I'm not sure if it can be called extremely common.

It's also known as "Disk Rot".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

It most certainly is a real issue.

I do have a few games with disk rot such as Unreal 2 and Morrowind on the original Xbox, the games still work, but it's only a matter of time.

SvennoJ said:

You will never be able to pop a disc in the Switch, nor a 3ds cartridge btw.

Well. Nintendo could release an updated dock with optical disk and cart support for backwards compatability purposes, the transfer of such data is more than okay over USB.

Is it likely to happen? I doubt it, but they took that approach with the Gamecube... So...

curl-6 said:

By the same token though you can put a DS cart in a 3DS, a GBA cart in a DS, a GB cart in a GBA.

You could also put Gameboy in the SNES, Gameboy Advance in the Gamecube.
And there were 3rd party adapters (Albeit uncommon) for similar for the Nintendo 64.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

AngryLittleAlchemist on 05 September 2017

It's seriously odd to me that I seem to be the only person on this forum that's ever complained about how hard it is to switch(hehe) physical games out on the Switch. No one talks about it! It's seriously way more frustrating than it should be! Maybe i'm a lazy piece of shit but I always seem to have to physically take the Switch out of it's dock to switch games over. I even have a lot of space where my switch is, it's in a big stand(although it is in it, so there's a ceiling) with a shit ton of room and it's still awkward as hell to get the cartridge out while it's docked.

Beyond that, opening a Switch case and seeing a dinky little cartridge is possibly the most underwhelming thing ever. If I wanted to see disappointment i'd look down my pants, not spend 60$

The one thing I really like about the Switch though is the ability to almost instantly play games out of the box, and I don't know if that's due to the cartridge or not. I've heard mixed things. I wish Switch games were the size of 3DS games. For now, i'll say discs.



VGPolyglot on 05 September 2017
Pemalite said:
VGPolyglot said:

I never had PS1 games with that problem, so I'm not sure if it can be called extremely common.

It's also known as "Disk Rot".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

It most certainly is a real issue.

I've heard of disc rot, I've just never seen any of my games do that. In any case, as I've mentioned I've had problems with my Master System, but along with that I've also had problems with N64 and NES games recognizing the cartridge. So, it's only a matter of time for cartridge-based games as well, much like everything else.



SvennoJ on 05 September 2017
Shadow1980 said:
On a personal level, I prefer the durability and shorter loading times of cartridges. Cartridge-based systems also have fewer moving parts and thus are more reliable and less prone to failure

Yet the WiiU version of BotW loads shrines and new areas faster than the Switch, disc vs cartridge... Switch starts the game faster though, although that's only a one time load. In the end it doesn't matter if it comes from a disc, a cartridge or the internet. Best is to install parts or the whole game.

I've had more SD cards fail on me than cds/dvds/blu-rays. While I have used less than a few dozen SD cards and probably over a thousand discs combined. Ofcourse those SD cards were heavily used, yet they can still break. SD cards are far more complex than a simple pressed disc. Simple solutions usually last longer.