If the NX does use cartridges again, would it be practical to put a substantial amount of extra RAM on the cartridge?
no, that's stupid.
>>343841968
If the NX uses cartridges think more along the size of DS cards than SNES or N64. It will just be one or two flash memory chips in a custom card format.
Anything else would make a game far too expensive to produce, and requiring extra hardware in a card would make digital distribution of that game impossible.
>>343841968
>would it be practical to put a substantial amount of extra RAM on the cartridge?
So not only do you want to put a substantial amount of NAND in a cart which would make it cost 500x more than a dual-layer Blu-ray, you want to add RAM as well? The PS4 and Xbox One already have 8GB of RAM, what would you possibly put in a cartridge that could make a meaningful difference?
You also need to keep in mind that there's no way a cartridge standard would be nearly fast enough to not bottleneck the fuck out of any modern RAM.
>>343843008
If it uses solid state media it would still read it into RAM before using it. Solid state media does have advantages over discs, harder to damage, faster access to random data, and the possibility at least of much faster read speeds.
The disadvantage of course is that solid state media is only now getting to the point where its cost effective vs dual layer DVDs. If NX does in fact use solid state media that would be a good indication that its some sort of portable device or some other sort of device that's not a replacement for the WiiU like if it was some sort of retro console.
>>343843967
Even the fastest SD cards on the market still only has 100MB/s sequential read speeds, which a modern mechanical hard drive can match. Obviously data would have to load into system memory. He said though that the cartridges could have RAM in them like the days of the super FX chip in the SNES. That would be pointless because any interface they use for the cartridges will too slow for RAM to actually have any real use and that would further increase the costs beyond what will already be the most expensive current-gen media.
I agree though, if Nintendo is doing carts it's because having moving parts isn't feasible, meaning it's a portable device.
>>343845590
Oh yeah absolutely. If they are using solid state media it will be like the DS cards where you have either single capacity with one chip, or double capacity with two chips. Today that would probably mean 4GB or 8GB which would be just about perfect for porting games originally shipped on DVD. Any kind of extra hardware just wouldn't make sense as it would be too expensive.
The only way I could see the NX going solid state media without being a handheld would be if it was some sort of budget holiday console, a new NES intentionally very underpowered aimed primarily at retro gaming experiences on cheap commodity hardware $100 system, $10-$20 games, include a bunch in the box. It would give Nintendo a license to print money one quarter a year just about every year.
>>343841968
They're not going to use cartridges again.
At least, not the kind of cartridge the N64 and back used, where it was basically just a modular section of the Motherboard that you replaced for every game.
At best, it'll be the glorified flash storage the 3DS and Vita use.
The cartridges that they use on 3DS or things like SD cards aren't the same as the old cartridges they used on N64 and earlier.
>>343846412
Yeah, official Nintendo clone systems that are cheap enough could probably make decent money.
If NX uses carts, what are some Boktai-style hardware gimmicks you'd like to see?
>>343848194
Accelerometer where you have to throw your console into the air as high as you can to charge an attack.
>>343848194
Monster Rancher-style monster generation using a radio receiver to pick up local broadcasts as a seed would be neat
it's coming out in 2017, right? given how fast SSD prices can drop, can we reasonably expect a cart to be something like a low-capacity pci-e drive, connecting like a famicom cart?
It might use something like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
>>343848194
The return of stackable carts
>>343851039
Forgot my pic
it's gonna use "carts", but it'll require persistent online to stream the game screenshot this post
>>343850663
I'm hoping it will be something the size of a credit card like this and not the size of DS carts.
