The DS uses a standardized memory card thats why you have homebrew
Huh? No, it's a Nintendo-specific format, and we have homebrew because Nintendo can't seem to work out how the hell a cryptographic signature works (not that I'm complaining, mind you!)
Pretty sure it's because they don't care.
I mean look at how much money they make off the ds. They don't do updates to make it harder to pirate stuff or anything because it's like throwing a grain of sand into nintendo's lake of profit. It's not like they would earn more money by doing it so clearly it's just not worth the time to nintendo.
They do, though; they do it for the Wii all the time, and they did for the DSi.
Well, right now SSD's are kinda slow, unless you want to pay out the ass for a good one
Still faster than optical drives.
The only thing slowing some current SSDs down is SATA transfer limits.
EDIT - Oh, wait, large sequential writes? There are plenty of SSDs that are 60% faster than even the fastest HDD. 180-200 MB/s is nothing to sneeze at.
Sequential reads and writes are easy, it's the random access reads and writes that don't show up on most benchmarks, and those are the ones you notice. The SSD industry is starting to get ahold of those too, though.
Sequential reads and writes are easy, it's the random access reads and writes that don't show up on most benchmarks, and those are the ones you notice. The SSD industry is starting to get ahold of those too, though.
SSDs have killed HDDs at these. Some mid-range models are 60 times better than HDDs at random reads, and 6 times at random writes. Ones that excel at the random accesses (Intel drives) are 92 times better at random reads and 24 times better at writes.
I dont get it though, we still use carts in gaming just not for the home consoles. The ds uses carts and i dont see them switching with how the psp turned out.
Though I suppose the umd is still sort of a cart.
DS cartridges are great for little kids, which is an enormous chunk of the Nintendo market. They're durable as fuck, so you don't have to worry about your 8 year old and his DS.
I'm pretty sure if you put a DS cartridge in the washer, it'd be perfectly fine once it dried out.
Having had this happen on multiple occasions I can verify this fact
The labels on them aren't affected much either.
Ohtsam on
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MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
You don't have a physical product. That's not going to fly in the mass market where people want to feel they are receiving something in exchange for their hard earned cash.
Cartridges I'm sure will make at least another round in the hand held market. I don't see it happening anywhere else.
There are two companies in the handheld market. One of them has decided that even disks are the wave of the portable past. The other one is the same holdout that held out on cartridges for home consoles. If you remember, they caved because that was a bad idea.
I love how people still think that their silly argument points and rhetorics are going to stem the oncoming tide of digital distribution. It's not an abstract concept. It's not just an idea. It's here. And it's here to stay. The only reason Apple still exists is DD. All gaming platforms have some sort of DD. PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PSP, DSi, iPhone/iPod.
Maybe it's not going to be the only channel available anytime soon, of course, but it's more and more the dominant channel. And it is the only channel on several systems already.
So, yeah, you can argue, stomp your feet, hate it, come up with the most clever arguments against it. It won't make any difference at all.
Cartridges I'm sure will make at least another round in the hand held market. I don't see it happening anywhere else.
There are two companies in the handheld market. One of them has decided that even disks are the wave of the portable past. The other one is the same holdout that held out on cartridges for home consoles. If you remember, they caved because that was a bad idea.
Cartridges aren't coming back.
Well using the PSP Go, which is a totally failing to sell, to point to carts being dropped in the handheld sector is pretty dumb. It probably set back the move to a DD future by a couple of years even though it's biggest problem is arguably the price.
Anyway Sony is coming out with a PSP 4k that will use disks so your argument doesn't even include Sony's plans for the PSP.
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Cartridges I'm sure will make at least another round in the hand held market. I don't see it happening anywhere else.
There are two companies in the handheld market. One of them has decided that even disks are the wave of the portable past. The other one is the same holdout that held out on cartridges for home consoles. If you remember, they caved because that was a bad idea.
Cartridges aren't coming back.
Well using the PSP Go, which is a totally failing to sell, to point to carts being dropped in the handheld sector is pretty dumb. It probably set back the move to a DD future by a couple of years even though it's biggest problem is arguably the price.
Anyway Sony is coming out with a PSP 4k that will use disks so your argument doesn't even include Sony's plans for the PSP.
The PSP Go didn't work because Sony was stupid enough to remove the physical media from a platform that already existed. Had they made a completely new DD-exclusive PSP with completely new software, it probably would have worked.
You know, there is a nifty new gadget called an "iPhone" that's taking over the world based mostly on a 100% digital app distribution model. And that's with all the fucking moronic Apple shit on top of it ("Oh, let's remove all the good free and payed apps from the Brazilian Appstore, and also let's completely block them from using the Music and Movie stores! ).
The other element people are ignoring about directdownloads is that even in a country with download limits like mine (Australia), ISPs still have to compete with each other for business and a big deal is whether or not they host their own local or don't count downloads from services like Steam.
I can download an unlimited amount from my ISPs local mirror of Steam, which is incredibly convenient. I imagine most ISPs will eventually find the same situation - at least where there's a competitive marketplace.
The other element people are ignoring about directdownloads is that even in a country with download limits like mine (Australia), ISPs still have to compete with each other for business and a big deal is whether or not they host their own local or don't count downloads from services like Steam.
I can download an unlimited amount from my ISPs local mirror of Steam, which is incredibly convenient. I imagine most ISPs will eventually find the same situation - at least where there's a competitive marketplace.
Man, you should really mention this on the Steam thread, we get lots of australians complaining about download caps.
If you're with Telstra, you can get downloads from the Gamearena servers. Not capped and good speeds (REALLY good for shitty Australian internet, like 2mb/s good). Fuck Australian ISPs up the ass, I pay way too much for this shit.
Cartridges I'm sure will make at least another round in the hand held market. I don't see it happening anywhere else.
There are two companies in the handheld market. One of them has decided that even disks are the wave of the portable past. The other one is the same holdout that held out on cartridges for home consoles. If you remember, they caved because that was a bad idea.
Cartridges aren't coming back.
Well using the PSP Go, which is a totally failing to sell, to point to carts being dropped in the handheld sector is pretty dumb. It probably set back the move to a DD future by a couple of years even though it's biggest problem is arguably the price.
Anyway Sony is coming out with a PSP 4k that will use disks so your argument doesn't even include Sony's plans for the PSP.
The PSP Go didn't work because Sony was stupid enough to remove the physical media from a platform that already existed. Had they made a completely new DD-exclusive PSP with completely new software, it probably would have worked.
You know, there is a nifty new gadget called an "iPhone" that's taking over the world based mostly on a 100% digital app distribution model. And that's with all the fucking moronic Apple shit on top of it ("Oh, let's remove all the good free and payed apps from the Brazilian Appstore, and also let's completely block them from using the Music and Movie stores! ).
And how much do those apps cost?
You want to sell $30 to $40 games (let alone $60 games)? Digital Distribution isn't going to carry you.
Cartridges I'm sure will make at least another round in the hand held market. I don't see it happening anywhere else.
There are two companies in the handheld market. One of them has decided that even disks are the wave of the portable past. The other one is the same holdout that held out on cartridges for home consoles. If you remember, they caved because that was a bad idea.
Cartridges aren't coming back.
Well using the PSP Go, which is a totally failing to sell, to point to carts being dropped in the handheld sector is pretty dumb. It probably set back the move to a DD future by a couple of years even though it's biggest problem is arguably the price.
Anyway Sony is coming out with a PSP 4k that will use disks so your argument doesn't even include Sony's plans for the PSP.
The PSP Go didn't work because Sony was stupid enough to remove the physical media from a platform that already existed. Had they made a completely new DD-exclusive PSP with completely new software, it probably would have worked.
You know, there is a nifty new gadget called an "iPhone" that's taking over the world based mostly on a 100% digital app distribution model. And that's with all the fucking moronic Apple shit on top of it ("Oh, let's remove all the good free and payed apps from the Brazilian Appstore, and also let's completely block them from using the Music and Movie stores! ).
And how much do those apps cost?
You want to sell $30 to $40 games (let alone $60 games)? Digital Distribution isn't going to carry you.
define "carry". Because Steam has no trouble selling a shitload of those too.
The other element people are ignoring about directdownloads is that even in a country with download limits like mine (Australia), ISPs still have to compete with each other for business and a big deal is whether or not they host their own local or don't count downloads from services like Steam.
I can download an unlimited amount from my ISPs local mirror of Steam, which is incredibly convenient. I imagine most ISPs will eventually find the same situation - at least where there's a competitive marketplace.
Man, you should really mention this on the Steam thread, we get lots of australians complaining about download caps.
Fucking christ, you need to trumpet this out to the masses.
Well my one only works for iiNet and currently it's downloading hella slow for some reason, but the principle applies for anyone who's ISP is running a local mirror or puts certain Steam servers in the freezone.
EDIT: It's this, works for a bunch of ISPs off the bat and you can add more from the INI files. It autoconfigures IPSEC in Vista and Win 7 to block everything except for the servers you want.
Well my one only works for iiNet and currently it's downloading hella slow for some reason, but the principle applies for anyone who's ISP is running a local mirror or puts certain Steam servers in the freezone.
EDIT: It's this, works for a bunch of ISPs off the bat and you can add more from the INI files. It autoconfigures IPSEC in Vista and Win 7 to block everything except for the servers you want.
To be honest, the Steam christmas sale is resulting in really slow downloads all over the globe.
Direct downloading has the lowest per unit margin cost, but requires the device to have connectivity and storage.
Optical discs also have a very low margin cost, but places inflexible geometric restrictions on the device. They also are generally subject to piracy.
Cartridges have a high margin cost, are generally not subject to piracy during the lifetime of the target device, and due to flash memory are physically capable of greater data density then an optical disc.
Flash handhelds will be on the market for a while, but long term I expect mobile devices to eventually overtake handheld consoles, especially once the mobile OS makers get their act together and start actively flogging phone makers for not walking in the same direction.
Direct downloading has the lowest per unit margin cost, but requires the device to have connectivity and storage.
Optical discs also have a very low margin cost, but places inflexible geometric restrictions on the device. They also are generally subject to piracy.
Cartridges have a high margin cost, are generally not subject to piracy during the lifetime of the target device, and due to flash memory are physically capable of greater data density then an optical disc.
Flash handhelds will be on the market for a while, but long term I expect mobile devices to eventually overtake handheld consoles, especially once the mobile OS makers get their act together and start actively flogging phone makers for not walking in the same direction.
I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. The DS is, by far, the easiest console - handheld or not - to pirate for this gen.
I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. The DS is, by far, the easiest console - handheld or not - to pirate for this gen.
The first half of the sentence was historical. Historically speaking, pre-flash cartridges were hard to pirate. I also said "generally".
Dunno about you but I started playing cartridge games with the 2600, back when the 2600 was what everyone had. DS and flash may be ubiquitous today, and yes, I understand that a flash based system is ridiculously easy to fiddle with, but cartridge does not equal flash. It is coming to mean flash, but historically it meant rom chips.
GothicLargo on
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
Digital distribution will kill physical media before cartridges become relevant again.
It's like speculating on the return of the 8-track.
In all possible ways discs are orders of magnitudes cheaper than cartridges/flash drives.
A disk is a piece of plastic with a huge industrial base ready to make them.
Cartridges/flashdrives are a billion times more complex to make and probably have less plants making them.
Pretty much this. I'd say digital distribution has a much better chance of becoming the dominant form of distribution some years down the road than cartridges.
But then you're basically looking at harddrives for storage anyhow.
Ideally, data stored and run on a server somewhere is the safest and cheapest. I think the trend is that physical media is going away in the long run, but not before digital distribution is going to take over in the short run.
I don't quite get the harddrive argument, both consoles and PCs have them. And games are not sold on hard drives.
The other element people are ignoring about directdownloads is that even in a country with download limits like mine (Australia), ISPs still have to compete with each other for business and a big deal is whether or not they host their own local or don't count downloads from services like Steam.
I can download an unlimited amount from my ISPs local mirror of Steam, which is incredibly convenient. I imagine most ISPs will eventually find the same situation - at least where there's a competitive marketplace.
Man, you should really mention this on the Steam thread, we get lots of australians complaining about download caps.
Fucking christ, you need to trumpet this out to the masses.
Belgium has these too. But I think they will be going away in some time.
As a matter of fact, Microsoft has started an investigation as to why Belgian providers have the cap, because it's keeping MS from deploying it's Zune service.
I dunno if it's been mentioned but the DS still kinda uses carts. Sure they look like SD cards but do they look more like CDs or carts?
I have always said there is a market for carts and the DS make that more true than ever.
The real nice thing about cartridges is pluggability. Most of the best games on ancient consoles were great because of some fancy new chip or code embedded in the cartridge. The systems were booted from the cart. The DS is booted with its own firmware, and the cards are just passive containers.
The only relevant question is whether we will have digital distribution (ie, they download the game to your hard drive) or centralized 'game banks' you log into and play remotely, with them streaming relevant content to you and uninstalling it afterward.
As someone who is terrible at looking after discs seeing carts again would be pretty cool. I doubt It'll happen though. It's a matter of marketing and perception, even if they are technically superior to discs it would still be seen as a step backward rather than having the "oooo new and shiny" factor that helps sell consoles.
Right now I'd say it's as likely as seeing the cassette tape make a come back.
If we were trying to go back to cartridges I would think the logical step would be a kind of sideways one to just out and out distributing small portable hard disks.
If we were trying to go back to cartridges I would think the logical step would be a kind of sideways one to just out and out distributing small portable hard disks.
I don't think you'll see miniaturized platter drives. SSDs have their flaws but they they're easier to make small.
In all possible ways discs are orders of magnitudes cheaper than cartridges/flash drives.
A disk is a piece of plastic with a huge industrial base ready to make them.
Cartridges/flashdrives are a billion times more complex to make and probably have less plants making them.
Pretty much this. I'd say digital distribution has a much better chance of becoming the dominant form of distribution some years down the road than cartridges.
But then you're basically looking at harddrives for storage anyhow.
But hard drives aren't technically carts bought for each game, they're a third medium separate from disks and carts. Carts don't require a hard drive, after all.
Had to respond to this on the first page.
Hard drives are a cost that is born by the consumer, so a digital distributor doesn't really have to consider that. Same goes for half the bandwidth required to download it as well.
If we were trying to go back to cartridges I would think the logical step would be a kind of sideways one to just out and out distributing small portable hard disks.
I don't think you'll see miniaturized platter drives. SSDs have their flaws but they they're easier to make small.
Not making them at all is even easier. I'm betting a few DS iterations down the line (or whatever successor Nintendo produces) those will be digital download too.
Did someone mention cartridges are hard to pirate? Some (if not most) ebay dealers get GBA carts in bulk from Thai pirates.
Joril on
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
If we were trying to go back to cartridges I would think the logical step would be a kind of sideways one to just out and out distributing small portable hard disks.
I don't think you'll see miniaturized platter drives. SSDs have their flaws but they they're easier to make small.
Not making them at all is even easier. I'm betting a few DS iterations down the line (or whatever successor Nintendo produces) those will be digital download too.
Did someone mention cartridges are hard to pirate? Some (if not most) ebay dealers get GBA carts in bulk from Thai pirates.
This is the truth. I got a few pirated copies of Final Fantasy VI Adv off of eBay before I educated myself on what to look for in the listing and on the cart itself once I received it. In my research on how to spot a pirated GBA game it dawned on me just how many of these bootlegs are out there. Cartridge piracy is srs bznss out east.
Yeah, and cartridge piracy is worse than disk piracy, because the evil bastards usually pass them as the real thing, while pirated disks are clearly fake, and therefore are sold for very cheap.
Yeah, and cartridge piracy is worse than disk piracy, because the evil bastards usually pass them as the real thing, while pirated disks are clearly fake, and therefore are sold for very cheap.
Not to mention in general it's harder to use a pirated disk on a console then it is a pirate cart.
Posts
They do, though; they do it for the Wii all the time, and they did for the DSi.
The only thing slowing some current SSDs down is SATA transfer limits.
EDIT - Oh, wait, large sequential writes? There are plenty of SSDs that are 60% faster than even the fastest HDD. 180-200 MB/s is nothing to sneeze at.
SSDs have killed HDDs at these. Some mid-range models are 60 times better than HDDs at random reads, and 6 times at random writes. Ones that excel at the random accesses (Intel drives) are 92 times better at random reads and 24 times better at writes.
Anandtech has good writeups.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=1
Having had this happen on multiple occasions I can verify this fact
The labels on them aren't affected much either.
There are two companies in the handheld market. One of them has decided that even disks are the wave of the portable past. The other one is the same holdout that held out on cartridges for home consoles. If you remember, they caved because that was a bad idea.
Cartridges aren't coming back.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Maybe it's not going to be the only channel available anytime soon, of course, but it's more and more the dominant channel. And it is the only channel on several systems already.
So, yeah, you can argue, stomp your feet, hate it, come up with the most clever arguments against it. It won't make any difference at all.
Well using the PSP Go, which is a totally failing to sell, to point to carts being dropped in the handheld sector is pretty dumb. It probably set back the move to a DD future by a couple of years even though it's biggest problem is arguably the price.
Anyway Sony is coming out with a PSP 4k that will use disks so your argument doesn't even include Sony's plans for the PSP.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
The PSP Go didn't work because Sony was stupid enough to remove the physical media from a platform that already existed. Had they made a completely new DD-exclusive PSP with completely new software, it probably would have worked.
You know, there is a nifty new gadget called an "iPhone" that's taking over the world based mostly on a 100% digital app distribution model. And that's with all the fucking moronic Apple shit on top of it ("Oh, let's remove all the good free and payed apps from the Brazilian Appstore, and also let's completely block them from using the Music and Movie stores!
I can download an unlimited amount from my ISPs local mirror of Steam, which is incredibly convenient. I imagine most ISPs will eventually find the same situation - at least where there's a competitive marketplace.
Man, you should really mention this on the Steam thread, we get lots of australians complaining about download caps.
And how much do those apps cost?
You want to sell $30 to $40 games (let alone $60 games)? Digital Distribution isn't going to carry you.
I happen to think they'll be the format of choice for the next generation of handhelds.
define "carry". Because Steam has no trouble selling a shitload of those too.
Fucking christ, you need to trumpet this out to the masses.
Frey's Steam Filter.
EDIT: It's this, works for a bunch of ISPs off the bat and you can add more from the INI files. It autoconfigures IPSEC in Vista and Win 7 to block everything except for the servers you want.
To be honest, the Steam christmas sale is resulting in really slow downloads all over the globe.
Direct downloading has the lowest per unit margin cost, but requires the device to have connectivity and storage.
Optical discs also have a very low margin cost, but places inflexible geometric restrictions on the device. They also are generally subject to piracy.
Cartridges have a high margin cost, are generally not subject to piracy during the lifetime of the target device, and due to flash memory are physically capable of greater data density then an optical disc.
Flash handhelds will be on the market for a while, but long term I expect mobile devices to eventually overtake handheld consoles, especially once the mobile OS makers get their act together and start actively flogging phone makers for not walking in the same direction.
I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. The DS is, by far, the easiest console - handheld or not - to pirate for this gen.
The first half of the sentence was historical. Historically speaking, pre-flash cartridges were hard to pirate. I also said "generally".
Dunno about you but I started playing cartridge games with the 2600, back when the 2600 was what everyone had. DS and flash may be ubiquitous today, and yes, I understand that a flash based system is ridiculously easy to fiddle with, but cartridge does not equal flash. It is coming to mean flash, but historically it meant rom chips.
It's like speculating on the return of the 8-track.
Ideally, data stored and run on a server somewhere is the safest and cheapest. I think the trend is that physical media is going away in the long run, but not before digital distribution is going to take over in the short run.
I don't quite get the harddrive argument, both consoles and PCs have them. And games are not sold on hard drives.
Belgium has these too. But I think they will be going away in some time.
As a matter of fact, Microsoft has started an investigation as to why Belgian providers have the cap, because it's keeping MS from deploying it's Zune service.
Edit: sorry for two posts in a row :-/
I have always said there is a market for carts and the DS make that more true than ever.
3DS FC: 5343-7720-0490
The real nice thing about cartridges is pluggability. Most of the best games on ancient consoles were great because of some fancy new chip or code embedded in the cartridge. The systems were booted from the cart. The DS is booted with its own firmware, and the cards are just passive containers.
Right now I'd say it's as likely as seeing the cassette tape make a come back.
I don't think you'll see miniaturized platter drives. SSDs have their flaws but they they're easier to make small.
Had to respond to this on the first page.
Hard drives are a cost that is born by the consumer, so a digital distributor doesn't really have to consider that. Same goes for half the bandwidth required to download it as well.
Not making them at all is even easier. I'm betting a few DS iterations down the line (or whatever successor Nintendo produces) those will be digital download too.
Did someone mention cartridges are hard to pirate? Some (if not most) ebay dealers get GBA carts in bulk from Thai pirates.
This is the truth. I got a few pirated copies of Final Fantasy VI Adv off of eBay before I educated myself on what to look for in the listing and on the cart itself once I received it. In my research on how to spot a pirated GBA game it dawned on me just how many of these bootlegs are out there. Cartridge piracy is srs bznss out east.
Not to mention in general it's harder to use a pirated disk on a console then it is a pirate cart.
I never asked for this!