Report: 3DS' Cart Bigger Than a DVD?

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Report: 3DS' Cart Bigger Than a DVD?



Could 3DS games be carrying as much data as titles developed for the Xbox 360?

With the arrival of the PlayStation in the mid-90s, videogames irrevocably started to make the transition from a cartridge-based medium to a disc-based one. Discs were cheaper to produce and held much more data, after all - it only made sense. Nintendo clung to its cartridges throughout the N64 years, but finally transitioned to discs with its GameCube - however, its handheld platforms continued to use cartridges even as competitors like Sony's PSP introduced disc-based formats of their own.

As with the Game Boy and DS, Nintendo's upcoming 3DS will use cartridges. However, thanks to technology continuing its onward progress, this may not be the handicap it once was. Taiwanese website Gamrade [http://www.gamrade.com/article-425-1.html] is reporting that 3DS carts will hold 8GB of data - comparable to the DVD-9 discs used for Xbox 360 games. In comparison, current DS carts hold a paltry 512MB of data.

However, according to Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5714846/nintendo-3ds-cartridges-are-so-beefy-they-might-surprise-you], Gamrade also claims that Nintendo has mandated a 2GB size limit for 3DS games for the moment. Why would it do that? Your guess is as good as mine; maybe the other 6GB is used to hold the techno-voodoo that makes the whole glasses-less 3D work.

"We've not officially announced anything on this so it's rumour and speculation - so we won't comment on it right now," Nintendo UK told Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-12-20-is-a-3ds-cart-bigger-than-a-dvd]).

The 3DS is out early next year. No price tag has been announced for North America or Europe.

(Via Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-12-20-is-a-3ds-cart-bigger-than-a-dvd])

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SalamanderJoe

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Jun 28, 2010
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If it can provide the same quality as a 360 game AND have built in 3D, Microsoft will be having a few days of bricking it. And then work on another Halo game to make a few extra billion to cheer themselves up.
 

Rad Party God

Party like it's 2010!
Feb 23, 2010
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Oh crap, it will take longer to download those pirated games...

OT: That's just simply awesome, I was actually expecting those cartdriges to hold up to 1 GB, I didn't expect them to be 8 GB. I long for the days of the N64 were cartdriges were the only limitation to deliver bigger and bigger games, now that a wee itsy bitsy cartdrige hold up even more data than a 360 DVD (they actually hold up to 7.8 GB), we can see even more current gen quality games on the go!. And considering what's already been done with the DS with it's actual limitation of 512 MB, then I'm pretty excited to see what those extra GB are capable of.
 

Heart of Darkness

The final days of His Trolliness
Jul 1, 2009
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Hopefully that extra 6GB of space isn't necessary to make the 3D work. That just screams of poor optimization. >.<

Anywho, it's good to see the size limit on the cards so exceptionally passes the size limit of the DS cards. Hopefully that means we'll see a lot more full-title not-RPG games on the 3DS. I'm also glad they're keeping the cart format because minimal loading times are always awesome.
 

omicron1

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I'm gonna guess Nintendo has made a size limit in order to create a sort of graphical advancement curve - as time goes on, they can unlock more and more of the cartridge space, leading to higher-detail textuers and a continual "Look how good this year's games look!" effect.

Alternately, they might be having manufacturing problems (only 2gb is guaranteed to work at present) that they hope to work out in the future.

Either way, this promises some interesting possibilities. Final Fantasy 7 3DS remake, anyone?
 

Baldr

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Jan 6, 2010
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SalamanderJoe said:
If it can provide the same quality as a 360 game AND have built in 3D, Microsoft will be having a few days of bricking it. And then work on another Halo game to make a few extra billion to cheer themselves up.
Your talking about the difference between a Harddrive and a graphics processor. There no way to fit a decent graphics processor in a hand held unless you pay a ton of money or cloud the game.
 

Covarr

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May 29, 2009
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What a misleading title; 8GB is most certainly not bigger than a dual-layer DVD.

P.S. Thanks
 

A Pious Cultist

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8 gigs? Well I know for sure you can get 4 gig flash drives which arnt really any bigger for about the same price so double that isnt entirely suprising.
 

MurderousToaster

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SalamanderJoe said:
If it can provide the same quality as a 360 game AND have built in 3D, Microsoft will be having a few days of bricking it. And then work on another Halo game to make a few extra billion to cheer themselves up.
Size =/= Quality
 

JUMBO PALACE

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Yeah the first thing I thought was that they needed the extra space for the 3D tech. I guess we will have to wait and see!
 

Wolfram23

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The size limit could be due to the hardware itself. All depends how the data is accessed, but for example an x86 system can't access more than 3.2gb of RAM while an x64 can access... lots. So it could be something with the internals unable to read more than 2-3gb.
 

Snow Fire

Fluffy Neko Kemono
Jan 19, 2009
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Covarr said:
What a misleading title; 8GB is most certainly not bigger than a dual-layer DVD.

P.S. Thanks
It certainly is very close, a double layered DVD is only 8.5 to 8.7 GBs in size, and considering it is much smaller than a DVD. I'm glad Nintendo is sticking with the cartridge for their handhelds. :)
 

John Funk

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Dec 20, 2005
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Covarr said:
What a misleading title; 8GB is most certainly not bigger than a dual-layer DVD.

P.S. Thanks
DVD-9s used in the Xbox 360 have a listed 8.5GB storage, but less than 8GB is actually writeable (usually).
 

BehattedWanderer

Fell off the Alligator.
Jun 24, 2009
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2GB? 5GB? 8GB? I could live with any of that. Just, please, please, let me play that new Paper Mario you teased me with at E3. I promise you, I will buy a 3DS as soon as you let me play that game. Yes, I will buy other games for it as well, and some of them might be unknown missing portions of my life that fill an inexplicable void, but right now, with or without the 3D aspect, I am craving some new Paper fun.
 

thanatos465

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I was reading awhile back about SanDisk was working on a 1TB SD card, I wished the next consoles would use SD cards.
 

GeorgW

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Aug 27, 2010
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I'm getting more and more excited about 3DS, can you please just stop talkiing about it so I won't have to rage that it won't be here for so long.

I like the cartriges, they're compact and load quickly. I think the memory gap may be about increasing quality over time. Which is stupid.