Before you pick up that torch or even consider giving more edge to your axes and pitchforks, let me explain a bit. Consider everything I say as wild speculation that came to my mind while day dreaming, I'm no engineer or programmer and I seriously don't know if such a thing would be feasable for today's standards. Ok, here we go:
While watching my sister play a couple of Virtual Console games, I had a nostalgia trip, thinking about how easier it was back in the day to simply pop-in a cartdrige and a few seconds later you were already playing. Then, an idea struck my mind. Why doesn't the industry even consider the idea of returning to such a business?.
First a bit of backstory: back then, it was a serious hassle, as every arcade port made by Sega for the Genesis might suggest (just look at Thunderblade [http://youtu.be/GRBQe2xgwHc] and Super Thunderblade [http://youtu.be/KjYH6Uy8UtA]), back then, both the Genesis and the Snes' cartdridges had a limit of 4 mb per game, not every single game used that capacity, but the heavier ones did, like Chrono Trigger or Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles had 2 mb of space each and combined with the lock-on feature, had the maximum capacity available for a Genesis cartdridge).
One generation later, we had the N64 cartdridges that were seriously expensive to manufacture and expensive for the customer, those ones had a maximum capacity of 512 mbits, or 64 megabytes (Resident Evil 2 and Conker's Bad Fur Day were the heaviest ones, both figuratively and literally) and they had a huge advantage against it's CD based competition, data transfer speeds.
After the N64, the use of cartridges were unheard of for 2 generations, except for the handheld realm, wich they still thrived. GBA's cartdridges were much easier to manufacture and held much more space than an Snes cart, holding a maximum of 64 mbits, or 32 megabytes, not too shaby for a platform that was more or less a portable SNES. A generation later, the NDS "cards" had much, much more space available, with a maximum capacity of 1gbit or 512 megabytes (there's still not a single NDS game to reach that maximum capacity, the heaviest ones use 256 mbytes of capacity).
Today, both the 3DS and the PS Vita still use cartdridges with a lot of space, as far as I know, the 3DS' carts have a maximum capacity of 8 gb and the Vita 8 or 16 gb, we've reached much more capacity and data transfer speeds than we had back then.
With all of this said, I think it's time for the industry to start re-considering cartdridges as it's main form of distribution for consoles. Aesthetically speaking, it doesn't have to be the clunky design of a 90's cartdridge, or even the same size of those, I'd be happy holding in my hand a copy of, say, Rage (a game that's the size of 3 DVDs or an almost full BluRay disc) in something in the size of somehthing similar to an iPod Shuffle.
Just think about it, the data transfer speeds would increment exponentially, something similar to an SSD [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive], combined with a boost in ram memory, it could make the use of harddrive discs almost unnecessary, except when you need to download DLC, but then, the developers could save a bit of space into those things to store all of your DLC into that same cartdridge, in the case of downloadable games, I don't know, maybe include some form of an incredibly big Nand memory into the console, making it almost a gaming SSD. Also, the lack of movable parts to read the device would hugely increment the longevity of both the game and the console (no more scratched discs!).
I really don't know how much it would cost to manufacture these in the long run and I think making a DVD or a BD is much more cheap than to make these things, but then, we've already reached to the point where an USB thumb drive [http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Flash-Drive-SDCZ36-008G-A11/dp/B001T9CTRS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328417057&sr=8-1] of 8gb costs $3.
So, what do you think about my wildly speculative and uninformed idea?, share your thoughts!.
EDIT: Well, damn it, I swear I didn't know MovieBob already touched upon the subject before, but this is pretty much exactly what I was trying to say:
While watching my sister play a couple of Virtual Console games, I had a nostalgia trip, thinking about how easier it was back in the day to simply pop-in a cartdrige and a few seconds later you were already playing. Then, an idea struck my mind. Why doesn't the industry even consider the idea of returning to such a business?.
First a bit of backstory: back then, it was a serious hassle, as every arcade port made by Sega for the Genesis might suggest (just look at Thunderblade [http://youtu.be/GRBQe2xgwHc] and Super Thunderblade [http://youtu.be/KjYH6Uy8UtA]), back then, both the Genesis and the Snes' cartdridges had a limit of 4 mb per game, not every single game used that capacity, but the heavier ones did, like Chrono Trigger or Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles had 2 mb of space each and combined with the lock-on feature, had the maximum capacity available for a Genesis cartdridge).
One generation later, we had the N64 cartdridges that were seriously expensive to manufacture and expensive for the customer, those ones had a maximum capacity of 512 mbits, or 64 megabytes (Resident Evil 2 and Conker's Bad Fur Day were the heaviest ones, both figuratively and literally) and they had a huge advantage against it's CD based competition, data transfer speeds.
After the N64, the use of cartridges were unheard of for 2 generations, except for the handheld realm, wich they still thrived. GBA's cartdridges were much easier to manufacture and held much more space than an Snes cart, holding a maximum of 64 mbits, or 32 megabytes, not too shaby for a platform that was more or less a portable SNES. A generation later, the NDS "cards" had much, much more space available, with a maximum capacity of 1gbit or 512 megabytes (there's still not a single NDS game to reach that maximum capacity, the heaviest ones use 256 mbytes of capacity).
Today, both the 3DS and the PS Vita still use cartdridges with a lot of space, as far as I know, the 3DS' carts have a maximum capacity of 8 gb and the Vita 8 or 16 gb, we've reached much more capacity and data transfer speeds than we had back then.
With all of this said, I think it's time for the industry to start re-considering cartdridges as it's main form of distribution for consoles. Aesthetically speaking, it doesn't have to be the clunky design of a 90's cartdridge, or even the same size of those, I'd be happy holding in my hand a copy of, say, Rage (a game that's the size of 3 DVDs or an almost full BluRay disc) in something in the size of somehthing similar to an iPod Shuffle.
Just think about it, the data transfer speeds would increment exponentially, something similar to an SSD [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive], combined with a boost in ram memory, it could make the use of harddrive discs almost unnecessary, except when you need to download DLC, but then, the developers could save a bit of space into those things to store all of your DLC into that same cartdridge, in the case of downloadable games, I don't know, maybe include some form of an incredibly big Nand memory into the console, making it almost a gaming SSD. Also, the lack of movable parts to read the device would hugely increment the longevity of both the game and the console (no more scratched discs!).
I really don't know how much it would cost to manufacture these in the long run and I think making a DVD or a BD is much more cheap than to make these things, but then, we've already reached to the point where an USB thumb drive [http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Flash-Drive-SDCZ36-008G-A11/dp/B001T9CTRS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328417057&sr=8-1] of 8gb costs $3.
So, what do you think about my wildly speculative and uninformed idea?, share your thoughts!.
EDIT: Well, damn it, I swear I didn't know MovieBob already touched upon the subject before, but this is pretty much exactly what I was trying to say:
