Officials said that Nintendo has decided to adopt the usage of cartridge into the next-generation gaming consoles as reported by WSJ.com. The possibility of old cartridges to be reused is re-evaluated as a result of the decision - this would be pretty cool for those retro game collectors, I wish I still had mine.
The era of mainstream cheap and soft disks started in the late 90s, championed by the first PlayStation console (PS1) which killed the cartridge era. The main reason of the cartridge's death is COST. Compact disks are very cheap to reproduce but also very cheap to copy. Over the years, game manufacturers and pirates are in a race to outdo each side on locking and unlocking video game copies. It is only up to the 2010s that the legit side has gained some upper hand by utilizing firmware updates as a means to combat piracy.
But now it seems that technology for cartridge-type of video game media is catching up. Samsung Electronics, for one, is now racing the clock to design and develop flash memory that is of low cost but has very large capacity. Toshiba on the other hand, becomes excited that the cartridge is on the spotlight again and tries to jump in to the race.
Nintendo is yet to choose between the stakeholders, to produce the cartridges for the next-generation game machine, Nintendo NX (not the final name). Nintendo adds that this vision makes sense.
Additionally, the advantage cartridges have favors the population of Nintendo gamers - children. Kids tend to cause damage on everything including the sensitive console discs. With the use of cartridges, this should be avoided since, obviously, you can't scratch a cartridge. However you can still destroy it, but that's another story. In addition to the cartridge's advantage, reading data is high since it is equivalent to today's solid state drive, well not really but you get the analogy. But what's most important is that cartridges are difficult to replicate and can be produced in high volume quickly.
Nintendo declined to comment on the cartridge topic and the release of the NX is still intended to be a secret as of this writing. Keep your hopes high though as 'Tokyo Game Show 2016' is coming this month and by then Nintendo is ready to speak up.
Here'a a video of today's kids reacting to the classic NES console that uses cartridges.
What do you think? Are you excited about cartridge-based games? Please share your thoughts on the comment section below.
