Cartidges vs Optical discs.

Pros cartridges:

• Console can be packaged smaller/cheaper with no implied need for a HDD or Optical Drive except when the console manufacturer wants backwards compatibility. So this saving can offset the cost of flash games for between 4-6 games.
• Catridges are smaller so you can fit more per package.
• Supports other forms of distribution/rental as in with re-writable media like kiosks.
• Cartridges can possibly be recycled and reused.
• Cartridges reduce loading times and are silent, they are also more reliable.
• Can help reduce 2nd hand market.
• Suits AAA developers and ever green software when you can be sure of pre-orders or continual sales.
• Can be patched in production or after release to remove errors.
• The cartridge size scales with the generation. In addition to this its also compatible with newer fabrication technologies which may be cheaper or contain more data without the draw backs of dual layer discs.

Pros optical discs:

• Easy to mass produce, easy to ramp up production and cheap per disc.
• Backwards compatibility is always available as an option.
• Familiarity of producers with this medium.
• Can play movie and music discs.
• Gives better variety as riskier concepts are easier to introduce.
• Can be made incompatible with common desktop writers.
• Better margins per game, can be sold for a lower cost.

Cons catridges:

• They cost more to produce.
• More difficult to ramp production up to respond to demand.
• Backwards compatibility may require an optical drive as well.
• Hurts risky concepts and smaller developers more.
• Provides an even easier avenue for piracy in the form of rewritable cartidges.
• Lower margins per game, cannot be as easily reduced to $10-20.
• May not have an option for 2nd hand software for consumers or this may become more difficult.

Cons optical discs:

• Noisy and may require additional hardware to work better, Ram and HDDs come to mind.
• Can be scratched/rendered unusable much easier.
• No control over 2nd hand market.
• Allows more shovelware to flood a system due to lower cost of production.
• Cannot be as easily patched without a HDD for every console.

Notes:

Now where I see cartidges working better are in two areas. The first is with consoles which have a multiple SKU system where you can have different features to meet different needs, so Xbox 360 Arcade concept is a good place to find catridges as it lowers the base cost of the console and there are few fixed costs to keep the entry price up. The second is when a console manufacturer wants to release a small and easy to use console or handheld like the Wii where the packaging requirements are for a small cheap and simple console. Its a possible candidate for a Wii 2.

You should also consider the total cost of the package rather than the game disc/cartridge itself. Every disc written generally has a case made for it as well, so the costs may be in the order of $3 for an optical disc vs $6-8 for flash media.

Fabrication plants are transitioning to 450mm wafers during next generation which means a substantial increase in dies per wafer and a reduction in the base cost of all silicon chips eventually.

NAND technology has hit a wall recently in terms of process shrinks, multilevel flash has to be run at very high voltages 10+ to operate. However new technologies are coming which promise faster, cheaper and more dense flash to be produced.

Lastly for backwards compatibility you need an optical drive and perhaps a HDD as well. It makes less sense to include these and go for flash media if you're producing an all in one console SKU which does everything so to speak. The simpler and more single minded the console it the more flash makes sense and the more feature packed your mainline console is the less it makes sense.

In order of likelihood my guess is Nintendo ----> Microsoft ------------------------> Sony as far as implementing this technology.

If Nintendo becomes the first to do this, then I think it will be awesome, but I can imagine the fanboyishness coming from people like with the SD vs HD thing.

There already is no implied need for HDD. For game installs it's merely a convenience, both for patches and speedups. HDDs are here to stay regardless if all 3 move to cartridges.

Optical drives are not scaling as well to Ram sizes so for every generation it takes longer to read the data needed of disc.

This is the reason that I think Cartridges will come back also.  Everyone wants things to be done faster, if Flash is faster than optical, people will change to flash, assuming that flash is as cheap as optical per GB.  Even if it isn't, what would you rather have, wait for an optical  drive like 10 minutes to load everytime you start up your gaming machine, or pay like $10 extra for a flash version for instanious load. It's like when somene uses a 3.0 GHz PC, and then they try to use a 1.0 GHz PC, most people go crazy cause they don't like that the PC is slow.

Actually its misleading to think of price per GB as game assets aren't exactly scaling much beyond 10-12GB as full motion video isn't required anymore except to hide loading which isn't really needed with flash and not many games will need more than 10GB within the first 2 years of a generation as they are generally just upscaled current generation projects. Comparing say Blu Ray 50GB and expecting the same size flash is just phrasing the problem in a way that will always favour optical drives without any bearing on the reality of the situation.

Also people should remember that flash can be both cheaper and more expensive as a distribution medium. Its cheaper in the sense that if people load up a quick flash cartridge 300MB/S = 8GB in 30s they can simply use kiosks and charge less for this content which cannot be traded or sold, say $50-55 and can also be rented with any stipulations the console maker and publisher agree to such as 7 days or one complete playthrough whichever comes first.

The loading you experience with a console is the time it takes to actually play the game. People say that Uncharted 2 is an example of a load free optical drive game which doesn't require an install. However theres absolutely no backtracking and the time it takes to start is greater than a minute. Furthermore theres no incentive to further punish a player who dies with a time delay as well. I remember an interview from the makers of Forza 3 that when people die/lose its the time they turn off the console. There is no such punishment with a flash cartridge based game.

ohhh, when I die in a game, it really really really painful. Like in FF6, you party dies, it says Annihilated and back to the start screen in like 2 seconds. In optical disk (I'm playing Rogue Galaxy right now, so I'm gonna use that as example) when I die, it takes like 30 seconds to go back to the start screen, I sontimes feel like I should just shut the thing off instead. Also when I go to the menu to see my items and weapon, there's sometimes like a 5 seconds delay, before i can even cancel out of it :S

I highly doubt they are going to go for kiosks. It will be either DD and/or rom carts, just like previous gens that had carts. What would be the benefit aside from faster loading times? The cons on the other hand are quite high. Using writable carts means no 'physical' medium in the traditional sense. Who cares about a cart that can get overwritten on a whim? The costs for a single game can be double what we pay for a single game. Cart + buying the game from a kiosk? No thanks.

The thing about optical drives vs carts in the past is that discs gave developers more options. More space, cost less. Not all game developers need 25-50 GB that a BRD might provide, but some might. If a developer _wants_ to create an epic large game, they can't with carts. And no multiple cart games would be way too costly: $100+ per game.

A properly designed console and game can limit the amount of load times with discs based games.

Consoles these days need HDDs anyway. My Fallout 3 save folder has 100+ save files. I've got tons of movies and downloaded games. I cant imagine how any of this would be possible with the limited space options provided by the Wii or even a rom-cart based system that eschewed a HDD.

cartridges could remove piracy... but if you look at the DS crackcards you'll see that the propreitary format should be as tiny as possible... and that's not customer friendly (kids would loose it)... so might as well go for the propreitary Discs that can't be copied...

But aren't holographic disks really fast?