Why not ditch the mobile crap and focus all development resources on the Switch? The smartphone is not a platform that can deliver compelling, engaging content like Nintendo is accustomed to producing. Mobile's bread and butter lies shallow, microtransaction-laden skinner box games you play for 5-10 minutes at a time.
As Super Mario Run proved, When Nintendo tries to chase that market, the quality of the product suffers greatly. IMO this kind of exposure could hurt their brand more than help it. Since the entire point of going into mobile games was for brand image/exposure, it seems to be somewhat counter-productive.
It depends on the chips inside of the cartridges. Traditionally, the game was stored on a ROM (read-only memory) chip which cannot be written to. Retro games with a save feature would use a separate RAM (random-access memory) chip to store the save file. The problem with RAM chips is that they need constant power or else they lose their data. Older games contained a battery inside the cartridge to power the RAM chip when the cartridge wasn't in the system to get around this.
Newer systems' cartridges (mid-GBA era and onwards) use NVRAM (non-volitile RAM) or Flash memory to get allow read/write without the need for a constant power source to retain data. These chips are more expensive to manufacture, however. It's quite possible that Nintendo went back to using good ol' ROM on their Switch cartridges to keep the manufacturing costs down.
@battlestreak: Not every game is a shooter. In a game like Rocket League, for example, the control type becomes largely irrelevant.
For shooters, there's no reason they can't do like GTA5 did on the PC version and separate the multiplayer based on control type. Xbox controllers work just fine on PCs and it's trivial to add keyboard+mouse support to the Xbox version of a game if the developer so chose. Just put the keyboard+mouse players and controller players in separate lobbys/matchups to keep it fair.
If I'm on PC and I really want to play with controller players on Xbox, I can use a controller, and if an xbox player really wants to play with KB+m players on PC, he can use Xbox-to-PC streaming or plug a keyboard and mouse into his Xbox.
Also, just because it's a cross platform release doesn't necessarily mean it has to have cross-platform multiplayer anyway. There's plenty of games that are being released on both platforms right now that have separate player bases.
@battlestreak: Why don't you think it's a good idea? It allows games to reach a wider audience and two revenue streams for the devs instead of one. More availability isn't a bad thing.
It's pretty simple, really: There's a large audience who want a game console and don't want to use or spend the money on a gaming PC. They couldn't care less if a PC version of a game exists or how it looks/plays, because they want it on a console and will buy the console version regardless. There's also a large crowd of people who have gaming PCs which they put a lot of time/work/money into who don't want to shell out an additional $500 for a console which is less versatile for non-gaming functions and doesn't play games with the same graphical fidelity/control options. They couldn't care less that a console version of the game exists, because they want to play it on PC and will buy the PC version regardless.
Why not market to and make a profit from both groups rather than just one? A PC version of an exclusive doesn't render the Xbox One pointless in the market as a gaming console, as there's many people who don't want to deal with the complexity/cost of building and maintaining a gaming PC and just want a pre-built solution that will turn on and play the game. If the Xbox One essentially becomes a Microsoft-sanctioned pre-built plug-and-play livingroom Gaming PC with a baseline spec that all games are made to run on, what's the problem? You can still use it as intended, or if you want a different experience, you can build your own machine to play on.
Really, the only people who will be bothered by this are of two groups: 1) PC gamers who did shell out the extra $500 for an Xbox One to be able to play the game and 2) Xbox brand loyalists who want to be part of an 'exclusive' club and deny others access to good games because they didn't buy the same 'shiny video box'. That second group of people are simply petty, as a PC version doesn't affect their ability to have/play an Xbox version.
@mikemurphy80: The controller works on PC as well though, so you could play against other PC players on PC. Though some PC games separate players based on control type to eliminate the problem of controller players getting dominated by KB+M players.
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