You didn't have to install an update before playing? I did.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Now that flash storage is so cheap: Back to cartridges/cards?
- Thread starter uncelestial
- Start date
Prices have dropped. Here are for instance spindles of 50 Blu-Ray discs for $20.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DUHUPCS/?tag=era0f0-20
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Smartbuy...nk-Data-Video-Media-50-Disc-Spindle/174375391
Even a more reputable brand like Verbatim as them at less than a $1 per disc.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Verbatim-BD-R-25GB-6x-Branded-Spindle-50pk/35206210
These are retail-level prices. Prices for Sony and Microsoft who buy millions each month should be lower.
Discs will forever be the cheapest since they're basically just etched plastic vs a card with transistors and resistors in it.
That said I'd love carts more but they'll continue to be more expensive.
That said I'd love carts more but they'll continue to be more expensive.
Nah, discs are distribution formats. Gives you access to the game without having to download anything, and they are also available many, many years from now even if licenses has expired. Discs as install was also used commonly back in the days on PC even when download versions werent available.
The first article is over 10 years old, a time when Bluray was a new format on the market. CD-Rs also used to be quite expensive when it was new. As someone else mentioned, prices has down in the past 10 years.
Last edited:
Its storage only. The read speeds are probalby fast enough.
Ok cool, I never understood if going to BD was purely because they are larger capacity than normal DVD's or if because they allowed for better quality like a movie would.
Well with that new found knowledge I will vote for the cartridges, I really miss the days of clicking in a cartridge.
I categorize mandatory install of a physical media as a negative solved by going back to cart, but then NBA Switch pulled that stunt on us.
I believe it's not necessary considering everything is digital and most consumers don't really care - that and all the games that require online. Your physical games might not work 20 years from now but the Internet will have them full patched and playable too.
You can get the cost down to $1 per disc on Disc Makers (5000 units, three week delivery), and that's a service aimed at consumers/small businesses. Big games are printed in hundreds of thousands (or millions).
The reason for why BD have better movie quality is also related to space. This means that you can compress the movie less than you need on DVD, and therefor also get better picture quality :)
Well, you learn something new everyday! Simple stuff but thanks anyhow.
I expect next-gen to move to triple/quad layer BDs. Price of disc and drive production by then should be low enough to make it profitable for both platform holders and publishers.
We'd need way less hdd space, but im Not holding my breath that huge say 1 patches will seize to exist
Mind you, those are single layer Blu-Rays. Most (if not all) PS4 and Xbone retail games ship on dual layer Blu-Rays which are considerably more expensive:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004CJ9KYC/?tag=era0f0-20
Of course, that's at a consumer level, Big publishers would get them much cheaper, but still, they seem to be at least 3x as expensive as single layer discs.
A distinction worth noting that I haven't seen anyone point out is the fact that modern "cartridges" (actually flash cards) are not the same as old-school ROM cartridges, so you don't get the same benefit on load times. The old ROM cartridges for the NES, SNES and co. all effectively acted as an "extension" of the system's main circuit board, which is what allowed for tech like the SuperFX chip and suchlike. The game was effectively temporarily part of the system's hardware while it was plugged in, which is why games could load instantly.
That said, I wouldn't be against newer systems using flash storage. As others have said, it's a lot easier to keep these safe and in good condition than discs for preservation purposes -- although Blu-Rays are much more durable than CDs especially.
That said, I wouldn't be against newer systems using flash storage. As others have said, it's a lot easier to keep these safe and in good condition than discs for preservation purposes -- although Blu-Rays are much more durable than CDs especially.
A small price to pay for faster load times, no installs and sturdier media!
Just allow them to be writable by the console for updates, and if you have DLC, just sell a bigger cartridge than your game is so you can add it to the cart. Everybody happy, everybody snappy, no more install crappy!
Yes you do get a benefit to load times. Flash memory is a lot faster, especially in non sequential reads/random reads, than a BR-Disk. So while it might not be as fast as ROM memory, as you correctly stated, load times would still increase majorly especially if they require random reads. Something even the harddrives in the two major consoles have issues with. Sequential reads can be similar, although one can easily design it so most of the bus is used for reading rather than writing. So only when you write a save, update or DLC, it is slower. But you'd be limited to your connection speed in those cases anyway. And even then one can design a bus that inverts the bus allocation dynamically depending on the state.
Really this stuff hardly is rocket science by now. It all comes down to the controller that you design/buy.
Yeah, I didn't say there was *no* benefit to load times, just that it's not the *same* benefit to load times as using ROM cartridges. :)
Also, re: the following post, not *all* games are using discs purely for install these days. A lot of smaller-scale games (lower-budget Japanese RPGs and the like) still pull data from the disc or make a small install of the executable. Conveniently, these also tend to be the games that don't get patched every two weeks, so the physical edition acts as a suitable "archive" copy, although there are exceptions.
As an all-digital guy this gen, I really hope that we'll get cartridges or at least an optional disc-less SKU next gen.
The thing is: disc-drives kind of determine the design of a console. Just imagine how slick a slim PS4/Xbox would/could look like (for example a cubic design)
The thing is: disc-drives kind of determine the design of a console. Just imagine how slick a slim PS4/Xbox would/could look like (for example a cubic design)
Publishers don't pay wholesale manufacturing price for their media. The cost is bundled with royalty and platform fees, the manufacturing price differential mainly impacts Nintendo vs Sony/MS.
Only when we get to 16/32GB cards do publishers start seeing that media cost difference, and even then it's not near a $8/unit difference. For 8GB and below they're paying the same for a Switch card or a PS4/XBO disc for their $60 games.