Topic: No Disk Drive?

I should point out that having no optical disc drive =/= digital only. They could use SD cards or some other equivalent. That could potentially be cheaper in the long run than producing Blu-Ray discs.

There just needs to be a big HDD. Not sure third parties would like that or not.

It could easily just be a paired back version of the Wii U that lacks the optical drive. Along the lines of the Wii Mini. It could be the NX but just one of the SKUs, the digital-only SKU that has a bigger HDD but lacks optical media. It may be that the NX is moving to cartridges or is actually going digital only. It could even just be that Nintendo is covering all bases and is trying to get in early to protect themselves from patent trolls. Or maybe they're throwing this out there just to put the gaming media on the wrong track.

It could be a lot of things.... but it is still fun to speculate. I do like that it still has a screen in the controller though. I also wouldn't at all mind a digital only or cartridge based home console. All of the potential options here are looking good IMO

And DS cartridges were upto 512MB, GBA games were upto 32MB and Gameboy was 1MB. 8GB isn't the end of the line, 8GB is 2011's cartridge spec. I think it's fair to say that something around 32GB for cartridges by ~2017? Well within reach. And games aren't getting bigger so fast that that sort of spec won't be able to cover the vast, vast majority of games. Especially if you've got a HDD where you can download a massive patch to at launch.

this does seem interesting, i mean i liked going retail or digital so why not.

Maybe they will sell a Disc Drive on the side lol

I don't think the negative backlash was as much about it being digital only as it was that you couldn't play used games or trade games, and that the Xbox One was going to be having to connect to the Internet every 24 hours to be able to play a game. I mean, you can still sell and trade digital games on Steam, from my understanding. I could slightly wrong on the little details, but then we'd be splitting hairs. But, I digress.

Regardless, eventually, we are going to have to have all of our media digitally. When is it going to finally be the time to where we switch entirely to digital? We're going to have to be ready sometime. I'm ready. I think going digital is a great thing. Games no longer take up physical space. If there were a console with no disc drive, it could have a smaller and more convenient design. You'd be able to carry your console comfortably to someone else's place and still have all of your games in the console with you.

Though, we need the necessary space. I haven't gone digital on my Wii U because I'm not exactly sure if I'd be able to carry all my games on a 32 GB hard drive. I could go digital on my 3DS if I bought a bigger SD card, but I haven't been wanting to spend the extra money.

Again, I don't think the next Nintendo home console will be digital only. I don't think it's worth it just for reduced costs, IMO. I mean, not everybody has reliable internet.
There has been talks of this patent basically meaning a Wii U Lite. While I would appreciate the existence of such a system, a revision without a disc drive is definitely not what I am expecting.

@TylertheCreator Most people clamor for options, so why remove physical media? You might be ready for digital-only, but what about those that don't have reliable internet?
I don't think we'll be living in a digital-only world anytime soon.

IF the speculation is to be believed (and as others have said, it can be fun to speculate) then you could buy Mario NX (working title) on cartridge to play on your mobile NX device, then when home, plug the same cartridge into your NX console device. Maybe even getting improved visuals when the cartridge detects the increased power from the console. Likewise (hopefully) the same cross compatibility can be applied to digital games (much like Sony does with cross-play on their devices).

This ties in with the "NX is a platform" rumour, and is somewhat mimicking Android and iOS devices that Nintendo have been keen on. The merging of the mobile and console divisions at Nintendo would also allude to this, if games work on the same operating system across multiple platforms, then you don't need Mario Kart Mobile and Mario Kart Console. Just make the one game and it works on both systems! This will save a lot of money and time for Nintendo who have been struggling to support the 3DS and Wii U simultaneously.

@VeeFlamesNL: More options is never a bad thing, but the digital option is supposed to replace the physical option. Hopefully soon, we will all be able to switch to digital.

@VeeFlamesNL: They can still ditch the optical disc drive. Ditching that doesn't mean they're going digital-only. They can use SD cards or some other sort of cheap flash memory.

@skywake 32GB is undercutting it honestly. 64GB would probably suffice though. Pretty sure most games these days don't take up more than that. If a game did take up more space, they could just compress it a little bit or do what Nintendo's doing with Xenoblade X.

Well I only say 32GB because from memory the Wii U's disks are only upto 25GB. So 32GB would be enough to be more than what the Wii U has. But you're right, it wouldn't cover all games because there are some games on other platforms that approach 50GB. That said, if cartridge capacity is still growing at the rate it did between the DS and 3DS? Then 64GB should also be well within reach.

Either way most games wouldn't need that much. Most games could get away with a 16GB capacity media. Some of the simpler ones could get away with something closer to 4GB! And the thing with cartridges is that for smaller games they can use smaller (and therefore cheaper) capacities. It's not as out there as people might think.

This means nothing. Companies file patents they never use all the time.

@skywake: Indeed. With Nintendo's compression skills, they could get away with 2GB for some of their own games. Splatoon for example is under 2GB if I recall correctly. Not to mention that the cartridges would only be for the vanilla game and save data. Patches/updates and DLC would be on the HDD.

After revising, in leaning towards an idea for a revised Wii U. doubt it that Nintnedo would go and make a controller with a screen again for the NX.

This. This. So much this.
Anyone remember this Sony patent?

Reading the patent I don't know the legalese so it's hard to understand. But it almost sounds like what they're talking about is a way to automatically move some of your downloads to flash. For performance reasons. Because they repeatedly talk about measuring the speed of each media and then copying the game between the HDD and non-volatile memory (i.e. flash).

Also when they say that the example is for a "game system" that doesn't use an optical disk? I think it may just be to make the patent a bit simpler. Because the process wouldn't apply to games on optical media.

People read to much into patents. It is an example system, not a complete system.

Also the patent sounds more like a caching system. Maybe for preloading or having part of the game in flash and the other part in hdd.

And the example system has a display unit in the controller? Not NX confirmed!

No physical releases means I won't buy the new system. But it could mean that it would support cartridges though.

One more thing, cartridges and sd-cards are way worse production wise. A disc can be pressed, cartridges must be loaded, which is a much more expensive process.

Cartridges is better for portables though, since it consumes less power to read from them.

Yeah, pretty much the entire patent is talking about checking what "speed mode" the game is to be set for. Then taking action based on what that "speed mode" is. Which included measuring the speed of external disks, flash and memory cards. There was also a bit about checking the data to see whether it is corrupted and then repairing it, presumably that process used the internet.

So it makes sense that the example system in the patent specifically doesn't have an optical drive. Because optical media would never be able to work like that. The system they're talking about in the patent could be implemented on the Wii U as it is if they wanted.

The read speed is also potentially much, much faster.