Nintendo NX Will Use Cartridges, Report Says

hmmm there hasnt been much news about nintendo lately... lets troll people! cartridges yea!!

I'm glad that gaming is finally moving away from optical discs. It and the old HDD splatter drive has single handedly pushed gaming back 2 decades in terms of load times we must endure.

For those of us old enough to remember arcades. Back in the days there was no such thing as Load screens.

Flash forward 2 decades, we're all sitting around waiting for our Street Fighter V to load each and every single match. Its ridiculous how much we've digressed in the load times for gaming.

We went from zero, to increasingly longer load times each and every generation.

Either get rid of all HDDs in all modern gaming systems and replace them with SSDs or just get rid of optical discs period for gaming.

Glad Nintendo is making the first move.

Somebody call regie and tell him that it's BAD idea .

Why do they make it hard for themselves? now tell me which developers would want to waste money on cartdiges that would cost way more than Discs even -_-.

I'm actually ok with this...the cards are way faster than discs and the newer models are actually quite big (i read there are even a few 100GB prototypes) i'm not saying all is good with the NX, i'm just saying this could actually be a good thing in the big scheme of things, personally i'm more concerned about how the system is not even as powerful as the Xbox One.

Not sure why Nintendo is thinking core gamers would want a weak, mobile based thing instead of a traditional console. Nintendoh!!!

Sounds refreshing to me.

Kewl and all... but are they going to offer decent games? [And by "decent" I mean non-kiddie games.]

Not that there's anything wrong with kiddie games, but I'd like to see some adult stuff nome sayin?

@deadpen: Or Nintendo could just, you know, actually make the base hardware powerful.

@deadpen: we'd be paying at least double the amount games cost currently right now. Plus, I'm not sure it would work exactly like you're describing it would. Fusing the game port with a processing or video port hasn't ever actually been done. Not saying it couldn't in the future, but as of now, there's no such thing. They should just make a console with good hardware to begin with, problem solved.

Just use the dam USBSnx sticks, problems solved..

This is like the 5th article I read about this. Who really cares just as long as the games are good

The only way I see myself being remotely disappointed with it is if it doesn't have native 1080p for mobile play & if it doesn't support HDR. It would be cool if it had an OLED screen too

Nintendo, they are a tenacious company. Seeing that they've had some of the most bipolar sales in the game industry, I'm quite positive that most of these rumors are either false, or just a small piece of the whole package.

While handhelds may be booming in Japan, as the mobile market is strongest there, Nintendo will have to focus on their home console just as much to keep western consumers interested. I'm not speaking for everyone, but only committed Nintendo fans such as myself will be interested in the handheld aspect. Of course there will be some that take another chance for Nintendo, and a decent base of children who want the handheld, but the bottom line is, is that western society has become more of a market for core gamers. We want good hardware and frequent software development.

I won't mindlessly defend Nintendo's decisions, because i believe I speak for many people when I say that if Nintendo releases a mobile focused console, they will be alienating their western consumers once again. The sales on tablets and gaming tablets have declined steadily over the past few years, so I see these rumors as another Wii U all over again. Fans would argue that the Wii U flopped because of marketing. But I stand by the conclusion that the Wii U failed because of dated hardware, weak software showcase, and lack of dedicated online services. Not to mention the gamepad was very offputing for most gamers.

If Nintendo wants to attract both core and casual gamers, they will have to do something like make the NX an OS, supporting a platform for future devices. This hybrid console theory is nothing new..

I think Nintendo will be smart enough to sell their devices separately. But if the NX is one platform for all their devices, this will make it easier for Nintendo and third parties to do work with. It would also explain why Nintendo has merged their development teams together.

As a Nintendo fan myself, I don't want another gimmick, and I don't want another underpowered toybox. Nintendo makes good games, but they would be even better if they sported some impressive visuals that compare to something like Overwatch, a game that uses cell shading. A theme Nintendo has been using quite frequently.

End of rant.

There is no storage advantage anymore with disks, they can do whatever they want.

this just has "bad idea!" All over it. But then again, Nintendo has been full of them since the 90's

They would be stupid to use cartridges. My bet is if anything they will be going all digital downloads with the NX.

Nintendo is so backwards! Under-powered hardware. Total reliance on their legacy franchises. Desperate to use gimmicky hardware to get back on top. That it's a question of cartridges vs discs is proof of how outdated Nintendo's thinking is. It's like they're stuck back in the '90s.

Why aren't they giving the NX at least a 128 GB SSD to store games, and download games directly from the Nintendo eShop? It works great for Apple.

And if Nintendo wants to keep brick-&-mortar retailers in the game, they can setup a NX booth to play demos and just sell game cards in-store. Stores like BestBuy and Gamestop just have empty boxes or game cards on the shelves for the newest games; the games are locked up in a cage or behind the counter. So just selling game cards with scratch-off download codes wouldn't be much different than how it works now.

If the NX is to use any type of removable memory card, it should be for expanded storage, similar to how the PS Vita or Android smartphones work.

Please charge $100 a games and I will worship their marketing genius.

This news comes as rather odd too me. I'm still trying to reserve judgement as best as I can.

I will say this: I do miss the "heft" in game packaging. Any gamer over the age of 30 will remember picking up their game from the store and feeling the weight of that Chrono Trigger, Legend of Zelda, or Super Metroid in their hands. As far as I was concerned, the man behind the slightly elevated plexiglass game counter was a wizard selling wondrous artifacts.

For me the main downside that I could see to using cartridges is that the metal connections on the plug-in side can wear through. I have a few old carts that had occurred with, and as far as I know there isn't really a good way to fix those. It took a good number of years for those carts to get that way by the way so it wasn't a short term thing, and it was on the NES and Sega Genesis so the way the cartridges go into the console/system should hopefully be better by now.

As long as they make the same noise when you blow them clean I'll be happy

Hmmm cartridges........Just seems so 80's again......cool

gamespot just stop

I am sure a lot of fans will be disappointed when they released the console i remember when they announced project cafe and that will be very powerful like high end PC but when they release the console and when people learned the truth that even PS3 and 360 are more powerful than their console when they opened it anyway i think they doing that and because they don't want 3d party support

I don't care if the games come on a potato, as long as they make em great