The thing that's changing? Optical media still wins on all measures to do with cost except for distribution where it loses to digital. As internet connections become faster? Digital distribution opens up to more consumers. Then on the $/GB side of things? Optical media stopped getting bigger, HDDs and flash keep going. Every day optical media is losing that advantage.
Yeah, this is the thing that's going to define the future of storage and media delivery. Optical discs are a dead end. They're not getting any better. A BD 10 years ago is identical to a BD today, and the cost hasn't really changed either. Carts though?
Considering how hard it is to pirate cartridges, this would be the best thing Nintendo can do if they make carts store just as much memory as Discs.
I can't think of one single cartridge based console that has NOT had its games be easily pirated.
what about the virtual boy? You can argue that its a failure but it has quality games in it and one of which is Wario Land....which I would love to have on the 3DS even if its red and black.
Going off topic on your own point.
I'm doubting the lack of Virtual Boy piracy has to do with security measures and more with it just not being popular enough to have a market for the system.
(then again, Famicom pirates will bootleg literally anything. Name the crappiest game you can think of and it's probably still been pirated. I guess maybe the difference is that once they have a setup to ripoff good games, it costs them little to counterfeit the garbage as well.
Not condoning their practices, just responding to this point.)
^ also the reason that there are still no 3rd party Vita memory cards. I'm sure some 16 year old in China has reverse engineered it by now, but then realized that the market for 128gb+ Vita cards just wasn't big enough to bother.
So Anakin kneels before Monster Mash and pledges his loyalty to the graveyard smash.
Yeah, this is the thing that's going to define the future of storage and media delivery. Optical discs are a dead end. They're not getting any better. A BD 10 years ago is identical to a BD today, and the cost hasn't really changed either. Carts though?
I think part of it also has to do with game sizes. There's a wikipedia list of games that spanned muliple disks and you can see the change. On the Playstation there were a lot of games that spanned multiple disks, the Final Fantasy games in particular. And not just two but 3 or 4 and in one case 5. Go to the PS2 and the disks are quite a bit bigger, far less games spanning multiple disks. None more than 2 disks. Then there's the PS3 where there are none. Other than collections.
At this point even the biggest games like GTA V can fit on one disk. So the fact that flash is getting to the point where it could be affordable at the same capacity as disks? Means quite a lot more than it did when games were regularly being sold on 4 disks.
There is a real difference between flash media (which in the end, will be in the cartridges) and discs; loading the game onto the media is much much slower with flash. Basically they need to write byte for byte to the flash, while the disc is pressed.
@DiscoGentleman: Yeah. That's what I thought since they make their own consoles, why couldn't they just manufacture the carts themselves? I think that its only the chipset that they would have to buy but other than that, I don't see them avoiding manufacturing carts because otherwise, why even have physical amiibo when you can just use it digitally?
Yeah, this is the thing that's going to define the future of storage and media delivery. Optical discs are a dead end. They're not getting any better. A BD 10 years ago is identical to a BD today, and the cost hasn't really changed either. Carts though?
I think part of it also has to do with game sizes. There's a wikipedia list of games that spanned muliple disks and you can see the change. On the Playstation there were a lot of games that spanned multiple disks, the Final Fantasy games in particular. And not just two but 3 or 4 and in one case 5. Go to the PS2 and the disks are quite a bit bigger, far less games spanning multiple disks. None more than 2 disks. Then there's the PS3 where there are none. Other than collections.
At this point even the biggest games like GTA V can fit on one disk. So the fact that flash is getting to the point where it could be affordable at the same capacity as disks? Means quite a lot more than it did when games were regularly being sold on 4 disks.
So they made multiple disks for more of the game and yet couldn't do the same for the carts at the time? Yeah I get that carts were a bit costly at the time but if you're putting more cost of the game by having two discs, wouldn't it be risky to pay more for development?
So they made multiple disks for more of the game and yet couldn't do the same for the carts at the time? Yeah I get that carts were a bit costly at the time but if you're putting more cost of the game by having two discs, wouldn't it be risky to pay more for development?
Well that's effectively what a larger capacity cartridge is. More chips in the same package. The size limit has a lot to do with how many chips they can afford to cram into it before they can't make any money off it.
For disks there isn't really a limit. Disks are so cheap that they can cram heaps of disks in one box and it doesn't matter. If that wasn't the case then it wouldn't be possible to buy movies for $20 new that contain four disks. But when they pushed the size limits in the N64 era? Some of those games retailed for $120AU. It was kinda crazy.
@Jason723: Not my tablet. I have to have Wi-Fi to download anything. I am not paying to have a phone connection on a device that is always at home. My 3DS comes with me everywhere, but just waiting for Wi-Fi when I get home to download my games is fine.
People keep saying the Xbox One doesn't have Backwards Compatibility.
I don't think they know what Backwards Compatibility means...
I can deal with that, 7 hours you can start the download in the morning and be playing it in the afternoon. Or start it the night before and have it ready for you the next day. 3 hours is enough time to just do something else for a bit. 1hour is nothing. So even with my crappy connection the size of the game for downloads is rarely the reason why I get a physical copy. In all of these scenarios the act of waiting for the stores to open, waiting in line, getting the game and driving back? Is more of a hassle than the download. However.
Ever since Nintendo started to bring every retail game to the eShop, I had thoughts about a generation where all games would be digital. Since I pretty much a collector, I would hate if that really happened.
I don't get all the hate against digital only. I hate to change the disc everytime you want to play a different game. That's so annoying and outdated! Even on PC you don't have to do that anymore (even if you bought the game on a disc).
SSBU is the only game I have in the disc tray of my Wii U (and only because I got it cheaper that way), all the other games I bought digitally.
To all the people being against it because of collector reasons: You should be well aware that optical discs are not a suitable medium to store/conserve things. They are the least reliable storage option there is. It takes between 5-15 years for them to become unreadable. So if anyone of you calls himself a real collector, you should be against optical discs.
Also, not only do nowaday's consoles offer preload, but also an option to download games remotely or in standby. Having a good or at least decent internet connection should be self-evident, I don't get why anyone would settle with less. After all, you choose (in the scope of what life gives you to deal with) yourself where you live and which internet provider you sign up with. The last time I moved, I immediately chose the fastest connection possible, which is 200Mbit (I didn't have this luxury before, so I know how it feels to have a bad or only half-way decent connection). It was a no-brainer for me. I don't care how much it costs, it's just a matter of principle. I want the fastest connection there is.
But as a compromise, for those who may not be able (life throws manifold obstacles in your way) to live/move somewhere with a better internet connection, there still would be another way: Flash memory. It could be SD cards, it could be USB sticks, it could be a proprietary flash medium. But it's way better than optical discs. BTW, Cartridges (like those for the 3DS) are just flash memory, too.
@shani:
It's all good and well to say "just move to an area that has better internets" but... it's not always that easy. For example in the city I live in there's one area where there's full fibre infrastucture with the option for plans up to 100/40Mbps and beyond. It's not like there are a lot of options there either, half of that area is very expensive and the other half is mostly commercial. And you'd have to be in a particular space to be able to move now. That infrastructure was only planned maybe 5 years ago and was only turned on a couple of years ago. It's a pretty narrow window.
And the only reason the service hasn't continued to expand from there is because of a change in government. The new government wants to deploy infrastructure that delivers something closer to 50Mbps. Again with boundaries that aren't exactly set in stone. Some people getting this infrastructure may have well moved to those areas under the impression that they were next on the list for FTTH. Their neighbours may be getting FTTH.
The rest of the city? Well we're all stuck on 5-15Mbps. And needless to say the "rest" is a pretty big space. It covers some of the less busy outer-suburbs, the cheaper areas, the most expensive areas. The entire spectrum. And it's a big city. I'm about 20km away from the nearest suburb that has a service that's better than my ~8Mbps connection. Five years ago I seriously thought it'd be rolled out closer to 5km from where I am. You can't plan for that.
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Topic: No Disk Drive?
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