So its all nice and cold and i decided to clean out my closet and out pops out my trusty old sega saturn. SO, i plugged it in and it works. its over 12 yrs old and still works like a charm..now im sure a lot of people havent even played a saturn, expt a lot of ppl in JPN i guess, but I was wondering why MS and SONY/nintendo ditched the cart slot, as did sega for the DC.

I remember playing Marvelvs cap with the 4MB cart and it was brilliant. SO why havent console manufacturers come up with something similar. I know its extremely ignorant of me to say if they added on say an extra 256MB/512 RAM cart graphics would get phenomenal, but there is defntly potential for games to get better, better textures, lesser load times etc? So how come no one picked up on that idea, especially SONY, considering they want their console to last 10 yrs.. wouldnt this be a good way to ensure it doesnt look as dated 3-4 yrs from now when the X720/wii HD hits?

On a side note, VF2, guardian heroes, sega rally,nights,panzer dragoon zwei you still rock

 As for Bugtoo!, ultimate mk3 and need for speed... god what the hell was i thinking back then

cheers

Too many technical and sales volume issues for that kind of thing right now.

It also requires foresight during the initial console design phase. Remember both the Saturn and N64 were built with an expansion pack slot in mind.

while that would make sense.. it wouldnt have to be a compulsory upgrade. You can get a 1gb RAM cart for prolly less than 10 bucks .. 2 yrs from now.. i wouldnt mind shelling 10 or even 20 bucks if it ensured that i could get 10-15% more juice from it.

If an extra gig ensure crysis was playable on the xbox or ps3 im sure that would garner some nice sales for either console eh..
.. oh well i guess its wishful thinking

this is the reason why the N64 was a failure for Nintendo, and why they lost marketshare. I don't think anyone wants to repeat this again.

This.

For PS3, you must understand it utilizes 2 different types of RAM.   GDDR3 and XDR.  1 GB for either is actually quite costly. 

There is also the technical matter that no interface exists on the consoles to apply the new RAM like the interface the N64 and Saturn had. 

As for Crysis, I know you were just using it as an example, but RAM is only one issue of many that would need to be addressed without sacrificing image quality.

I think perhaps you both missed the question, the OP is asking about expansion ports for system RAM (like the one on the front of the N64 that Majora's Mask and Perfect Dark required) not the cartridge vs. disk medium.

I'd have to question the role of said RAM these days. In the N64 days it was used for 'hi-res' in Perfect Dark and Turok and i can't remember whether it was compulsory or not for Majora's Mask for textures or some such. Either way in those days it was generally used for either a resolution boost or theoretically for a frame boost. Frame rate was a big issue in that generation and plenty of games played in the hi teens and low 20's.

These days however all games are pretty much expected to play at 30 locked or 60 right out of the box. If the RAM was included to allow 1080p for all games for example, you are risking sending mixed messages to the consumer. Sony for example saying the PS3 was a 1080p system and later releasing a RAM upgrade to allow 1080p in all games.

Apologies, this post was more organised in my head and no time to rewrite.

That was applicable with the N64 in so much that it was double the RAM with the expansion pack and the limited resolution and texture requirements allowed for that kind of easy upgrading with just more RAM.

It's far more complicated now and just more RAM alone may not help much.

Not sure if you remember but Sony originally only planned to launch the PS3 with 256 MB of RAM. It was only after serious pressure from developers did they bump it to 512 MB.

Actually weren't Sony originally touting the PS3 to be an upgradable system like PCs? supposedly consumers would be able to upgrade things like the RAM later on in the life (thus justifying the 10 year plan)