I think that solid state drives and flash memory are going to become a lot more important in the next decade or so. Consoles are going to begin having much fewer moving parts.

You really have a penchant for overexagerating things to an extreme and making it seem like you honestly believe yourself, doncha?  The vast majority of games released today could fit onto a 4 gig sd card, which can be had for as little as $6 from newegg, and 8 gigs goes for $12.  The cost to the publishers would obviously be even less than that.  It may add $10-15 in cost at most, and that's if anyone did it today.  Those prices are half of what they were this time last year, and that was about half as much as the year before.  At least for the next 3 years or so prices are going to continue to plummet as well, and any growing needs for space (which are still very limited) will be met.  Still, the increase would be noticable and not positively recieved by many.

Considering that memory cards are multiple times the size of CD, i don't think the storage capasity will be a problem, as presented in the OP.

Basically only the cost is the issue with cartriges. As in terms of storage space required, game budgets are a lot more likely to hit the roof than the storage space available on memory cards.
Basically cartriges are superior media to discs. You can have game saves on the cartrige (well, SNES CD-ROM had this covered), it would also be the best solution for DLC, for having it downloaded on the same cartrige as the game is in. And, the moment the consoles go for DD only, we are back to cartriges in case someone doesn't have their console online.

@Dodece: Your quantum computing comment didn't make any sense. Care to explain?

@Mr.Y: Increase?

Ok, so a 4gig SD card is $6, how much do you think a single DVD is?

And you're crazy if you think they wouldn't get marked up.

I doubt it.. But that'd be sweet! Blowing the plugs out and smacking on the console to make it work right.. Good times! I'd support a new cartridge console

Uhh, maybe you should, like, check the math or something.  Go ahead, add that up.  If it costs $6-12 retail and games go up by $10-15, that's an additional mark up of $3-4 per game at the retail level above and beyond the relative cost of production.  Yeah, that was real hard to see there, huh?  And as had been said before, those costs are coming down ery fast right now, essentially halving every year. Also, on top of that, the format opens up a lot of other options to improve revenues, such as reduced shipping costs (smaller packaging is an option) or permanently associating a game with a system, ending the used game market.  You can't do that very well with discs used for consoles. 

Again, you're exagerating to quite an extreme.  When the N64 was in production carts cost more than $20 to make for much of the system's life and many games were still released at $50, though it was more likely to see a game over $60 on the N64 than PS1 relative to library size.  If they could maintain nearly the same prices on average when the product cost an extra $20, do you really, honestly think cheaper memory would jack the prices up even higher?  That's not even logical in the slightest.

Another thing that bears noting:  carts load much faster, so greater compression is an option.  One of the things that kept the N64 competitive was that data could be compressed to a 6th the size while the PS1 had very little in the way of compression.  This allowed RE2, a 2 disc game, to end up on a single N64 cart with some sacrifices, and N64 carts at their most only held 1/10th of a CD's worth of data, rather than being pretty much the exact same size as the standard (like, say, flash to dvd).

@Twesterm: DVD is about twice the size and the size of SD is around 3 times as expensive.
Anyway, if you mean by markup the card price that the distributor buys them from manufacturer, there's no markup in there, but if you mean by markup the increase price of the game, then yes, there would be one.

Could well be. Flash cards already have a higher capacity than BluRay, read speeds are much higher and the additional benefit is that it's much harder to pirate, if done well.

I have long argued that carts should come back, and I would love to see the Wii II go back to using carts completely (i.e. drop the disc drive). Some of the reasons include:

 - form factor: The Wii without a drive would be 2-3x smaller.

 - power: It would be lighter, consume a lot less power, need a smaller fan and be quieter.

 - price: the manufacturing price would be slashed. Could be talking half the current manufacturing price.

 - loading times: seek, read and loading times would be smashed. Games could include their own save memory.

 - RAM: The majority of RAM on consoles these days is used as a 'cache' for loaded meshes, sounds, textures and general data. Most of this data is "read-only" - its just cached. In theory, any data on your cart effectively increases your total available system RAM. Fort instance - say the Wii II has 256MB of RAM. But stick a 4GB cart in it - and its effectively got 4.25GB of RAM (4GB R/O, 256 R/W). This would blow the next-gen PS3/360 out of the water.

 - reliability: Carts are much more resistant to damage than discs, and are bend/scratch proof. In fact, I have *never* had any cart ever fail on me (including NES, DS, N64, ...).

Now, the one obvious drawback - effective memory size. The people here quoting USB stick sizes are very, very wrong. Games do NOT need volatile/Flash RAM - the data is READ ONLY. R/O memory is much, much cheaper, faster, easier to produce and reliable than Flash/USB memory.

DS cart tech is effectively 6-7 years old. Nintendo *could* provide 4-8GB carts now - and possibly ones even bigger. The new technology carts being developed are closer to 1TB. Point is, as technology improves - cart sizes would increase, and become cheaper as the generation progresses.

The other, much more real reason they wouldn't drop the drive - backwards compat with Wii titles. It would be more likely that the Wii II has both a drive & cart slot - and the next console goes cart only.

...

DVD/BluRay might cost 10c-$1 each to press - carts could be $0.20-$3.00. When you compare this to the cost of full games, its pretty much a tiny cost.

Look at the DS vrs PSP - carts are a huge part of why the DS is ahead.

Both Sony & MS have experience and vested interest in disc drives - Nintendo has vested interest with carts. Bringing back carts is not even close to as crazy as many of you are making out...

Actually, there are many benefits to having writeable media, such as being able to get updates onto the original media and not needing anything additional for game saves or DLC.