>> Should Games go back to cartridges?

[black orb]

cost and storage capacity so the answer is no.

>>> Storage is not an issue anymore and cost, not an issue either (atleast for the manucaturers)..

It should be noted that flash drives are far more likely to go faulty

>>> Just the bad quality ones..

If one of black orb's siblings were to ever-so-slightly be clumsy when removing or inserting a flash drive to a USB port then it could easily be buggered. It also brings out the potential for users to rather easily accidentally wipe the data. I'm not sure how secure a USB flash drive can be when it comes to disabling the ability to write/erase data from it, but CDs obviously have protection against that sort of thing.

I can see flash drives being used in the future but I don't look forward to it... I'd prefer blu-ray or even pure downloads.

>>> Cartridges will be more like flash cards than flash drives, if they make it like flash drives an usb port is too slow they would need a firewire port or something better, and obviously you wont be able to erase the data either..

>>> One more thing, going back to carts will make things harder for piracy..

[Mirage]

Or easier. Just look at acekard for NDS. Costs nothing (20 bucks is nothing), doesn't void warranty, can be installed and used by a 10 year old.

And even an USB 2.0 flash drive is gonna be faster than the bluray drive in the PS3, partially because there is no real seek time on such devices, and because 480 Mbit/s is still actually 60 MB/s (minus some overhead and crap, lol) (oh and there's USB3 too now, which would probably be easily available by the time the next consoles come out). It's the flash storage inside the USB drives that is the limitation on most USB thumbdrives, not the interface.

Regardless, the use of USB thumbdrives for games isn't likely. It'll probably be some proprietary interface, because those guys think security through obscurity works ;).

It would also be easy to make an USB thumbdrive read-only.

[Slothy]

And even an USB 2.0 flash drive is gonna be faster than the bluray drive in the PS3, partially because there is no real seek time on such devices, and because 480 Mbit/s is still actually 60 MB/s (minus some overhead and crap, lol) (oh and there's USB3 too now, which would probably be easily available by the time the next consoles come out). It's the flash storage inside the USB drives that is the limitation on most USB thumbdrives, not the interface.

You beat me to it. Even on the USB 3.0 being far faster than USB 2.0.

[Mirage]

I was actually more worried about you proving me wrong on something when I saw your post on the search page :p.

[Yeargdribble]

>>> One more thing, going back to carts will make things harder for piracy..

My R4 would like to have a word with you. At this point you've made this cart thing into a pet and are actively ignoring anything except what you want to hear on its behalf.


This isn't he binary argument the thread makes it out to be. It won't be carts or discs soon so it matters not. Steam style digital distribution fixes every problem mentioned in this thread.

-piracy
-storage space
-HDD space
-damage

None are an issue with the type of DD that Steam uses.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Except I don't get my pretty case with the manual and disc/cart.

[Slothy]

-piracy
-storage space
-HDD space
-damage

None are an issue with the type of DD that Steam uses.

Not quite. Piracy is still possible, and does exist for games like L4D and L4D2, but I really doubt it's as rampant or as easy to get all the benefits of the game through it. I doubt you'd ever be able to play on an official server using a pirated copy which limits your multiplayer options substantially for Valve's games. Other titles wouldn't necessarily have that limitation though.

[Madame Adequate]

Yeah, you can pirate L4D/2 but you can't play them online if you have. For me that would be fine because I dislike human interaction, but for most people, that's kind of the point of the game. xD

[black orb]

Steam style digital distribution fixes every problem mentioned in this thread.

>>> Steam Style DD?. Im totally ignorant about the subject, care to explain?..