DS carts aren't R/O, are they?

Actually that's a thought I had years ago.

Optical media have many drawbacks: They're huge power consumers because they have to spin, they have long loading times, they're easily damaged, they're big.
Ok, maybe the next console generation will still rely on disks. After that - who knows if downloads won't completely replace ANY physical media?
One thing's for sure: Nintendo will stick to cartridges for their handhelds. If, say, the DS2 is as powerful as the Gamecube, games will roughly be the size of GC games, too. 2-3 GB cartridges won't be more expensive in 2010 than 256 MB cartridges were in 2004 (max DS cart size).

Edit: Just read that shams had already said all that.

From a quick google search i found flash cards at 100Gb and read speeds of 35MB/s.  Blu-rays go up to 400gb and at 8x they go at 32MB/s, but from my understanding they can already read at 12x.  So can you provide a link where they hold more data and are faster without costing an insane amount.

Of course they are. They might have a small flash/eeprom on them for saving - but 99% of the cart is R/O.

Firstly, the PS3 doesn't have 12x drives does it - in fact BluRays read slower than DVD drives (part of the reason for this insane manditory pre-install process).

Secondly - we are not talking USB/Flash cards. R/O media is much, much faster - has special dedicated interfaces, etc.

A lot depends on how the read transfer is done - but cart media have vastly superior random access times, not to mention seek times. So disk drives are better for reading large amounts of memory at once - but carts are better for "general" memory access.

Just look at DS development - DS carts are basically treated "as memory" - just slower memory. You can easily stream sound & music from the carts. And again - its 6-7 year old tech.

...

The point with carts, is that you don't have to preload all the data into normal RAM - you just use it as required. Capacity is much more an issue than speed is.

Well! That shut me up.

R/O carts are kind of a dream for me, then.

I wonder how big a solid state drive could feasibly be by the time the Wii's successor comes out. Could Nintendo sell a disk drive add-on that lets you burn disc images of Wii games (or Gamecube games) onto your console's drive? Or even just lets you play them using the add-on? Would the last be possible with USB 3.0?

If they wanted to, they could come out with a system for like a hundred, hundred and fifty bucks next gen, with an optional disc drive add-on, and destroy the world. It's an interesting thought.

@Griffin: I'm not sure about the maximum size of NAND memory, since it can be used in clusters, but the maximum read speed currently stands at 200MBps.

@Chichirimuyo: Actually the cartriges could have read-only section (for the game data) and rewritable section for game saves and DLC.

If you consider SD cards as cartridges, maybe. There is a chance developing costs fall down next gen due to a hardware powerful enough to render the desired graphics without tricks (think about how Killzone 2 dev costs were twice those of Crysis) so perhaps they'll be able to use SD cards without raising price or shit.

I would like this very much.

@Haxxiy: Basically the difference between different card types is the size, shape and connector type, the tech is the same. Cartrige is a memory card just like SD or CF, with the difference that cartriges have usually been read-only media.