Any chance carts could make a comeback?

[Hatta]

Perhaps we'll see some sort of hybrid system. Sell games on carts in stores for $60-70 to service the bandwidth impaired and sell downloadable games for $50-60. Maybe the carts could even be flashable by authorized retailers. Bring your reusable cart in and fill it up with games for a discount over what a prepackaged cart+game would cost.

People keep mentioning piracy in this thread. If anything piracy concerns would favor cartridges as media. Optical media is nothing but a string of bits. So is a flash chip. However, a cartridge can incorporate additional circuitry to obfuscate that string of bits.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

There's a big problem with what everyone's been saying here on the thread.

It is currently illegal to sell a finished retail software product which is considered to be a permanent item on degradable, temporary or self destructing media. (And no floppies/magnetic media don't count as they are considered reusable media and were grandfathered in.) Flash is a temporary self destructing form of media just like EEPROMS and CD-R's. This is done for protection on the consumer level and to prevent product failure on a massive scale.

If anything comes out in cartridge form it HAS to be Mask ROM based. Now Mask ROM's are EXPENSIVE, and until a massive one tens of gigabytes large becomes as cheap to produce in comparison to CD's, DVD's and Blu-Ray's then it's not going to happen.

Even DS carts which I thought were flash based for the longest time are actually extremely small Mask ROMS with a small amount of flash used to store game saves.

Basically unless you all like spending a few hundred dollars per purchase like if we were all buying Neo-Geo: AES games in the early 90's we're just beating a dead horse.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

yeah before the flashcarts (playback of ROMs) comes into the equation, how is it so easy to extract a ROM from a NDS cart? Like you pointed out, you can't stick a cart into your cheapo BestBuy computer and copy it onto a 99 cent blank cart. I'm just curious how the copying of these carts has been so widespread since your original post made a good point about curbing the piracy if carts were used.

Actualy, NDS carts use a modified version of the SD card protocol to interface with the DS. Get a cheapo card reader, modify it a bit and use some special software to extract the ROM. It's simple mainly because with most carts the only copy protection is how the media itself can't just be stuck in a computer and ripped to an ISO like a CD.

[Hatta]

It is currently illegal to sell a finished retail software product which is considered to be a permanent item on degradable, temporary or self destructing media. (And no floppies/magnetic media don't count as they are considered reusable media and were grandfathered in.)

What law is that?

Flash is a temporary self destructing form of media just like EEPROMS and CD-R's.

How long does it take for flash to die, assuming it's not written to? I think it's on the order of decades.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

It is currently illegal to sell a finished retail software product which is considered to be a permanent item on degradable, temporary or self destructing media. (And no floppies/magnetic media don't count as they are considered reusable media and were grandfathered in.)

What law is that?

Flash is a temporary self destructing form of media just like EEPROMS and CD-R's.

How long does it take for flash to die, assuming it's not written to? I think it's on the order of decades.

Flash can take less than 5-10 years to die or completely corrupt. Reads AND Writes both have a limited number and not using or not formatting it after a while results in errors and general calamity. The media itself is fairly robust and can last quite a while, but only if formatted and maintained properly.

I can't remember what specific law it was called I remember learning it in my computer science class in HS when we were tasked with making a BS piece of software and finding distribution for it. My teacher flipped shit when we tried to tell him we could sell it on CD-R's and flash drives to cut costs.

EDIT!: For example I have a 64MB flash drive from 2001 I still use today for tiny stuff and word docs. I always ALWAYS make sure to back it and everything on it up and format it monthly as it likes to go corrupt every few weeks to two months or so. I left it unplugged and in a drawer for like a year or so at one point and bam the first time I plugged it in after that it was completely corrupted and I had to do a format.

[Rurouni_Fencer]

If cartridges DO make a comeback, it'll probably be as some sort of encryption-based key for the games to be able to run in our consoles.

[Flake]

Does this flash memory degredation apply to media like Gameboy Advance games or gamecube / playstation memory cards?

[BlackDS]

If Records can make a comeback in the music industry, I don't see why an open-source console couldn't revive the old school cartridge.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Does this flash memory degredation apply to media like Gameboy Advance games or gamecube / playstation memory cards?

Games are retail product, therefore retail product comes on Mask ROMS. Gameboy carts used battery back up and later on flash or EEPROMS on the save memory, but the game part of the cartridge itself is a Mask ROM.

90% of all memory cards are flash, therefore after a while will eventually stop saving no matter what. But using your memory cards themselves is the best way to prevent it. I don't mean delete everything and re copy it but at least plug it in and use it every once in a while to make sure it stays in good working order.

Flash itself can last decades and decades, but the data stored on flash itself it not permanent and will eventually disappear or become corrupted if it's not moved around or used every once in a while.

EDIT!: For example: Almost all EEPROMS themselves are guaranteed to last 50 years or 100,000 write/read cycles, whichever comes first. Although it isn't a hard limit as to lifespan, just where the legal guys felt most comfortable. The data stored on EEPROMS though isn't guaranteed for crap as just using EEPROMS begins making the data disappear. So yes it'll last just about forever in a usable state, but the data you put on it won't.

[Flake]

@Mon_Man

So you're basically saying 'use it or lose it'?

Sometimes I wish I was more tech savvy. Wrapping my head around concepts like flash memory or degradation is not an easy thing.