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Forums - Gaming - Cartridges -> disk -> Cartridges come back??

jefforange89 on 07 January 2010

I'd love for cartridges to come back.

Optical discs suck.



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DM235 on 08 January 2010
TWRoO said:
Also for some of your facts: Hard Drives are not multiple discs, it is just 1 disc... and SSD is a lot cooler running than HDD because there are no moving parts, so heat would not be a problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disc_drive#Capacity_and_access_speed

Unless you are talking about little microdrives, most hard disk drives have multiple platters (or disks).



Kennyheart on 08 January 2010

CD are awesome so yeah.Cartiges have littled memory and it takes a lot of money to make them with a lot of memory.That's why Square swicth to the playstation.



Red4ADevil on 08 January 2010

This is where a company like nintendo is good at masking. Metroid Prime series; their doors took like 10 seconds to open, Twilight Princess gave you a fading scene of link and epona when you exit and enter places. I dont know if the wind waker had loading times despite people claiming it. cant think of any other game but they're pretty good in masking. Its better than the *now loading* scence, though SSBB couldnt avoid it since it uses a dual layer.



dobby985 on 08 January 2010

Hard drives and installation are the future.



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DM235 on 08 January 2010

Cartridges are expensive, and they are still capable of failure.

I think optical discs will still be in use in the next generation of consoles. Given current trends, I expect them to be Bluray discs. And I also expect Nintendo to use a non-standard Bluray disc (probably to save on licensing costs).

I think the industry will go digital soon after that, mainly so that publishers could eliminate used game sales. I also expect the industry to use a method similar to Steam, where users can download a game before release, but they just won't be able to play it. This way, the downloads will be more distributed over time, and you will lessen the effect of everyone trying to download the game at the same time and overloading the servers.

Even though I know the UMD format wasn't very well accepted, it would have been impossible to release 1.6 GB cartridges for the PSP back in 2005. There is a spec for 15.6 GB DL mini-Bluray discs which I could see in use on the PSP2. Since Blurays would be more "universal" than UMDs, I think they may be easier to accept by the public.

I can see Nintendo handhelds using cartridges though. Nintendo doesn't care for gratuitous graphics, so using 1 GB or 2 GB cartridges may not be so bad. I would like to see Nintendo use a common industry format for its handhelds though (like SD cards). The proprietary formats get hacked anyway, while a standard format cartridge would allow someone to backup their saved games to the PC, for example.



hsrob on 08 January 2010
TWRoO said:
loves2splooge said:
TWRoO said:
loves2splooge said:

Flash memory is just way to expensive. Even if you consider the fact that 6.8 GB is all most games need at this point (usually games that require more than 6.8 GB these days have excessive cinematics. If game developers weren't obsessed with creating hollywood blockbusters or J-soap operas, we wouldn't need multiple DL DVD discs. Call me an old fart but I'm not impressed by "cinematic experiences" anymore like I was when I was a teenager and the whole FF7 and MGS thing felt new to me. I just want to play the freakin' game.), by the next Gen that won't be enough. So even 8 GB flash memory cards wouldn't be enough to house games and 8 GB flash memory is pretty darn expensive. A lot cheaper OEM than buying from a store but still very cost prohibitive I'm sure. Game prices would have to go up.

Now for stuff like DS, flash memory works for them but their capacity is tiny. Only 256 MB max. Now seeing that the DS has been out since 2004, the Next Gen DS flash cards will have a good deal more capacity. But I bet it won't be all that much. Maybe the cards will hold like 1 GB this time. But I think it'll be a long time before you could feasibly release games on a 8 GB flash card at a reasonable price to the publishers for home console releases. And by Next Gen, 8 GB won't be enough anyway I'm sure since games will become more graphically intensive and thus require more capacity (even without the cinematics).

I believe some DS flash carts are 512MB already (4Gbit) and the maximum is still unknown.

The DS successor will probably use at least 2GB to start with, and will only increase from there as the system ages (assuming the next handheld uses carts... which it probably will)

An advantage handhelds have over home consoles is that they use their own speakers and screen, which naturally don't need to have huge sound files or huge FMV files for cutscenes, which is really what takes up most of the space on the PS3 games that supposedly take up 25GB (for instance MGS4 supposedly took up the whole disc, but I bet half of it was for music and sound, which could have been compressed to half it's size and no one but those with uber sound set ups would have noticed any difference)

Out of curiosity, which DS games have hit the 512 MB (4Gbit) mark? The biggest game I've seen thus far was ASH (from Mistwalker) and that was 256 MB. Very rarely do DS games go above 128 MB. Even FF4 with all its fancy cutscenes was 128 MB (like you said, FMVs don't take up much space when you are designing them with a 3 inch low res screen with low quality internal stereo speakers in mind).

If Next Gen DS starts off with 2 GB, that'll be nice. That's more than the PSP's dual-layered UMDs (which they used for Crisis Core and some other big games).

Dunno, could be BS as it's from Wikipedia, maybe DSi supports higher or something (didn't mention that on the wiki page though) even so, I don't think there is a maximum as such, I would think they can at leats go to 2GB just lik SD cards can (more than that and they are SDHC cards) but again from Wiki, the larger cards have a slower data transfer, that and they are just not needed.

Here is one game that uses a 512mb cartridge, I don't know if there are any others.

http://gamerlimit.com/2009/10/biggest-ds-game-in-the-history-of-the-world/

@Red4ADevil: I don't think doors in Metroid Prime never took ten seconds to open, it may have felt like that sometimes with bad guys breathing down your neck, but I never remember it being more than 3-4 seconds.  Also if you play Prime on The Trilogy the load times are virtually gone in the first game. I actually think Prime 3's doors take the longest to open but it's never more than 5-6 seconds from memory.



Senlis on 08 January 2010

Very few people have mentioned the #1 problem with optical disks, failing disk drives. Disk based systems are doomed to a shorter lifespan (than cartridge based) simply because of dying drives. This is why I would be ecstatic if we returned to some form of cartridge, such as flash.




 

Red4ADevil on 08 January 2010

@ hsrob I was exaggerating a little, while they might not have taken that long, it felt like an eternity to me. Thats why I want to get the trilogy so bad; I want to play prime again minus the load times, and the freezing glitch that occurs in one the elevators.



hduser on 08 January 2010
jack100 said:

Let's assume that the future of gaming isn't legal downloading of games.  Let's say 10 years from now we can still go to our local game store and still buy a game physically.  I would hate online distribution, I personally like to have a physical cartridge or disk than download it.  A lot of people are assuming that the next high Capacity "disc" that will be used in gaming is Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD).  I'm asking is it possible that Cartridge based gaming can come back?  Here's a little of my argument, right now you can get Solid-State Drives that are hard drives made from several flash drives (I guess), whereas the normal hard drives are made from cylintrical several disc like disc.  We know that Flash drives, such as USB, SD (mini and micro) and getting smaller and faster.  By the time when HVD comes out (theoretically holds 1 to 10 TB) wouldn't there be flash drives that can hold that capacity, AND you an access the data faster than a disc drive?  yes right now they're expensive, but they are getting chaeper, smaller and can hold larger capacity every year.  One problem that I can think of with flash drive gaming would be how too keep it cool in the next gen console if it's reading it at a really hgh rate.

I persoanlly hope so, I hate loading times that disc give me on my consoles, but I guess I'm more spoiled when it comes to speed since I liked it when I popped in a cartridge and the game would load instantly.  Also please don't say games don't have high loading times, they do, all disc based games do, they had a lot of background loading which I can tell in some games and it annoys me :P

Smaller, yes.  Faster, yes.  Cheaper, no.  It'll never happen as companies will look out for their bottom line and not your convenience.