Topic: No Disk Drive?

@skywake: If that really is the case that things go digital, what about card games on consoles? They aren't that great compared to the actual card games. And if that really is the case, then Amiibo can easily go digital, why does it need to be physical? Simply because the figures look amazing and obviously, it feels like a toy rather than something that you can get digitally. Distributing it digitally could lower the cost but they would still keep the cost the same as it is in retail simply because of the mindset that lowering the cost would degrade the value. Its like the cost of Virtual console games being too expensive even though I don't mind it considering that emulation on a console is harder than it sounds.

Now I agree that there needs to be a change which is why I want them to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of physical copies. Why not just have a physical copy of the game but instead of a game CD or Cart, have a pen drive where I can put it on the console and it will install it faster and when done, I can like remove it. And when there's no space left, instead of storing my saves and the actual game in it, just store it again in the pen drive. I don't think manufacturing pen drives is that hard than carts or CD's.

Today I have to spend another $100 to get an HD for my WiiU because I've run out of space on my 32Gb model.
So I have to get the HD, transfer all the games and re-download the ones I had to delete for space reasons.
I could easily go to any GameStop in the country with $100 and get 20 second-hand games spanning 6 modern consoles. And if GameStop is still doing their 3x2 thing, I can get 30 games - that's basically more than anyone could play in one year (entertainment value: 70%).
Or I could forget about videogames for a second and use the money to go to a great concert, then go out for dinner, then go to the pub and drink as much as I like - and I'd still have some money left for some great 2nd hand games (entertainment value: 90%).
No, instead I have to buy a ugly looking expensive box that becomes exclusive to the console it's connected to, and waste the afternoon storing games on it (entertainment value: 0%). The convenience of course is that if I want to travel to Machu Picchu and I want to bring my WiiU with me, I can finally do it without having to bring a folder full of games with me (I have to bring the HD though, which weights more and usually needs its own power adapter). Thank you, beautiful future!!

@Artwark: You're taking my off-the-cuff and qualified comment way too literally. You complained about the idea of digital distribution for games and effectively said "what's next, game reviews? currency? the entire world?".... all I said in response was that yes, it pretty much is. Because it kinda is. That's not a controversial statement and in saying that I'm not saying that literally everything would go digital. When I brought up the fact that Amiibos are one such thing that could keep gaming retailers selling stuff if games went digital? I wasn't saying that Amiibos would also become digital. I was saying the complete opposite. I'm not that obtuse. TBH I think sometimes people on these forums deliberately misread what I'm saying just to have an argument with themselves.

As for the costs of digital distribution well, I guess @spizzamarozzi is whining about that so lets go down that road. Really, for digital distribution, it basically just boils down to the cost of the hardware itself. Costs which are already part of the cost of the PS4 and XBOne and will likely be included in the cost of the NX whether it's digital only or not. Just like the 32GB of flash that was included with the Wii U which was also part of the cost.

I mean we could be honest and note that storage gets cheaper every year. That a 128GB SSD today costs about the same as a 128MB thumbdrive did 10 years ago. Or that a 3TB HDD today costs about the same as a 128GB HDD did ten years ago. We could recognise that as this process continues we'll get to a point where storage is basically no-longer an issue as it increasingly isn't. We could do that. Or we could pretend that the world is static and that digital distribution will now and forever mean running out of space on 32GB of flash and having to fork out $100 for a box that'll hold probably more games than we'll ever buy.

No, it'll never get to a point where the thing comes with more storage than we'll ever use. What a ridiculous idea.

I say you two hash this out over google hang out and then upload the 9 hour video and we'll decide a winner.

@OneBagTravel:
I don't know, if you read the last page I'm not sure you could even call what is happening an argument. It's more a case of them shouting things and me repeating myself in hopes that they'll actually understand what I'm saying.

we can also be honest and note that while the average game 10 years ago was just a few Gigabytes in size, nowdays a perfectly normal (and old) game like Assassin's Creed 3 on WiiU is 20Gb, making the 32Gb deluxe WiiU absolutely useless in case you want to go digital.
Storage is another cost that adds up to other costs (such a having a state-of-the-art internet connection) for digital games that gets hardly mentioned. The proof is that I now have to go out and spend €100 for a black box that simply has no ludic function and that I didn't need if all my games were in physical format.
I can't care less if in 10 years what I pay €100 now is going to be sold for €10 because I need it now. In 10 years games will be 200Gb in size (just like 10 years ago games were 2Gb in size) and I would need something that is x100 times as big as the one I need today - and, I will still be paying it €100.

The point is, people: you have to be RICH and STUPID to go digital!! You have to pay premium price 365 days a year, you can't trade in your games if you don't like them, you need expensive storage devices and expensive internet connections, you can't sell you collection if you need the money, you can't ask for a refund if the game is a glitch-fest and you can't buy them second-hand.

The only thing digital is doing is making Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, Capcom & Company richer by the day. They are selling you the same crap they have always sold you, but this time without manufacturing, packaging, shipping, warehousing and retail-selling costs - on consoles FOR THE SAME PRICE OR MORE!!
And did this make them kinder towards us?! Hell no!!! You have to be crazy to think that by giving them more money, they would give us more!
Sad example: today I was browsing the Nintendo Club website and sadly noticed that out of 18.000 star coins earned, I have only spent 11.000. This means 7.000 star coins had expired (I have zero now). Nintendo has basically robbed me of 7.000 star coins I had legitimately earned by purchasing their official products, simply because I didn't spend them timely (probably because there was nothing decent to get on Club Nintendo BEFORE THEY ANNOUNCED IT WAS CLOSING). Cheers Nintendo, that was kind!!
I could have gotten the Luigi's Mansion diorama for 7.000 stars - which currently goes on Ebay Australia for €135.00 without shipping. So tonight, in celebration for this clever theft, I will buy me a bottle of wine and pirate €135.00 worth of Nintendo games. And to add insult to injury, I'm going to play them all on the PSP.

It is all about what you value about your games. There are people that do not value re-selling or buying second hand games. There are people who find spending $100 on a 2TB Hard Drive is a equal or better option than buying a Book Shelf for $150 (For a decent book shelf, not those flimsy Target/Walmart brand ones) or more. It is about what you, as a consumer, value. I value digital as I have pets that could cause damage to my physical items. I value digital because I am able to have a huge collection while taking up a small amount of space, the space of the external drive. I purchase my games day one or on sale, so second hand prices aren't of value to me. If there is an issue with the product I don't have to go back to a store, I just have to call someone, which is valuable to me. There is not 1 answer that fits everyone. However, I do think more and more people are becoming accepting of digital products as it is more convenient and that is valuable to people. You can have your opinions about why Physical is better, or why Digital is better, but those are just your opinions and it may not apply to someone else.

If you want to see the pros vs cons of a digital only environment look to Steam and Mobile. There are good things that come with digital only, just like there are bad things too.

Then ignore one another. This back and forth is going nowhere.

Anyway, back on the topic of no disk drive; I recently was over at a friends house and he's a collector of nearly all video game systems. We were rocking an arcade Neo Geo board with the huge bulky cartridges. Boy was it amazing to play these games with zero load times. I'd just love for Nintendo to bring this ability back. Have everything stored on the cart, use the console simply as a processing unit with full access to the carts ram banks. Would be glorious

Stop focusing on what the Wii U has, this thread has never been about the Wii U. It's actually about whether a digital-only console could reasonably exist at some point and how far away from that point we are. The fact that the Wii U only has 32GB of storage is a non-issue in the same way that the Wii only having 512MB is a non-issue.

With game sizes, well lets go over to steam and chart some of the most popular AAA games for each year. Works out to be ~4GB in 2006, ~10GB in 2010, ~30GB now for the "average" AAA game. Then at the same time I'll write down what capacity HDD was included in the 360/PS3/XBOne/PS4. Interpolate the numbers, try and work out what the in-between years would have been for console HDDs. How many games would a typical console hold? Well here's the graph:

And it's worth noting that flash is getting cheaper faster than HDDs are. In about five years time SSDs will be cheaper per GB than a typical HDD of the same capacity. So again, being completely honest with the numbers here. Storage is not an issue even when you take into account the increase in game sizes.

A box which is built in to all modern consoles whether you go digital or not. As I pointed out earlier the Wii U is a product of 2012, whatever the first digital-only console is it won't be bound by those same costs. If games continue to get bigger at a slower rate than storage does? Eventually we'll get to the point where we won't even think about storage. Hell, compared to 10 years ago we're pretty damn close to that point now.

And again, what about the cost of the optical drive? Is that not a factor? Or the cost of physically moving cartridges/disks all over the world and paying some dude to stand behind a counter for you. You're so quick to whine about the costs of a HDD which I would assume stores more games than you could ever buy. A one off purchase. Why don't you take into account the other costs on the physical media side of things?

edit: changed graph from median game size for that year to the average of that year and the year before

The nice thing about old school game cartridges is that they really are memory. As ROM, they become part of the console's memory. So as you say, there's no load time because there is nothing to load: the stuff is already there. But these hypothetical cartridges on the NX might not be the same deal. If Nintendo simply opt for something similar to SD cards, then the stuff in the cartridge will no longer be mapped to memory. The cartridge would look like a disk drive — like today's USB flash drives or SD cards — and the console will still have to load stuff into memory. It would still be pretty fast, but there would be noticeable load times.

I actually like the idea of zero load times. I've never owned a cartridge-based game console, but I've played bigger VC games like Ocarina of Time and was impressed by the absence of load times. I imagine this is because VC games are small enough to be entirely loaded into memory. It would be nice. But I don't have high hopes for old-school ROM cartridges, even if Nintendo decide to go with solid state media.

Yeah @cwong15 it's a part of gaming that is really missing these days. It's something most gamers have forgotten about and I feel it could be a great selling point if Nintendo wanted to "keep it weird" in their style of going against the grain.

I'm deliberately trying to not be influenced by nostalgia. This is all based on seeing a game have zero load time. It really changes how you interact with games down on a subconscious level. It's like going through roundabouts your whole life and then moving somewhere where's there's traffic lights everywhere. You really miss those free flowing roundabouts.

The biggest thing I don't understand with the cartridge supporters is, what happens to those smaller developers that can only release digital games? The idea of the cartridge returning is to replace both Game Discs and Hard Drives, but not all games have a budget to release physically. Nintendo having to release cartridges with free space for downloadable games adds in extra steps that people may not be wanting to make and it makes it more complicated than the current way. Also it could lead to a similar problem that the Vita is having, its memory cards are expensive because they aren't universal. Can someone explain to me the benefit of cartridges compared to a possible digital storefront?

@DefHalan:
I don't see that as being a problem. The 3DS uses cartridges and there is absolutely zero issue downloading content onto that system. I can't understand how the method for physical distribution would at all impact the move towards digital distribution. Digital distribution is here to stay.

I have just heard people say moving to cartridges would mean they wouldn't have to include storage with their systems and that would cut down on costs.

@DefHalan:
Those people are idiots

Moving to cartridges would increase cost. Also it wouldn't be faster than installing to internal flash/hdd and play it from there. This is just nostalgia talking, when games sizes were counted in kilobytes, not gigabytes.

I just had a thought. Remember how the Wii used SD cards instead of hard drives? Well what if this is the case for the next gen as well? While its not going to be an issue, there are some cards that only work with the system kinda like how there are only certain SD cards that work on the 3DS. I had that issue once where I couldn't move Olympic Winter games to the SD card.

Also, seeing as how manufacturing is ridiculously cheap in China and seeing as how mostly Nintendo gets their products manufactured there as well, it may sound pointless to remove the optical drive if the cost itself is cheap enough to begin with.

@Artwark: It’s not about the disc drive itself, it’s about the cost ecosystem it implies. Basically no disc drive could still mean a cartridge based system, but that still implies the same downsides in regular business as the discs: entire retail, shipping and manufacturing costs to get physical stuff to the physical you just to enjoy digital content.

It’s far more likely that nintendo drops physical media altogether when they start looking at the numbers. Seriously, it saves so much cost it’s not even worth considering the trade-off people with slower internet make - there’s ways for nintendo to ease that pain anyway. And the 10 dollar disc drive manufacturing cost into a system could easily be moved towards increasing internal storage. While not a one on one cost ratio, it really isn’t that much of a cost increase compared to the benefit of not having to bother with entire manufacturing and retail processes again.

That said, there’s storefronts in places now that just say “nintendo” instead of 3ds or wiiU. I can imagine those being filled with all the form factors and accessories nx has, a crapload of amiibo and stuff that interacts with the software, and whatever they decide to do with the toys concepts. And while manufacturing and distributing those… well… ship a few games along with it?

@erv: You know? That's what I don't get at all. Why would Nintendo remove the drive when their consoles are going to be as cheap as it is now using the Lateral thinking through wittered technology? Might as well make the Amiibo digital because they are already hard to get. Might as well make an OS for the 3DS or Wii U directly on Steam instead of making the hardware itself.

Again, this can't happen unless Nintendo figures out a way of how consumers can sell their digital content like how it can happen for physical copies.

@Artwark: Well, most likely, adding in a terabyte or 2 in storage space on a device is not expensive to do if the manufacturing costs are offset by not including a disc drive, that’s my point. Adding disc drives costs you money, adding storage costs you money - but not as much as most people assume. But only doing one saves on not doing the other, so to speak.

And if there’s value on the experience of feeling and getting a game in a physical store, I guess nintendo could consider it. Like there’s value in holding and feeling amiibo. But The tradeoff is, of course, incredibly huge expenses in manufacturing, shipping, insuring etc.

But nintendo should absolutely not facilitate a second hand market. One of the benefits of having digital content is not being able to resell it to anyone. I like it that way too, it will improve market dynamics considerably. You selling a game to someone else means the developer gets no money, after all. If anything, making that impossible to do is one of the benefits of digital only.