Looking back at N64 and PS1 got me thinking. Why are we not playing on cartridges now? Surely they could put large ass games on flash drive type devices now...

Is it because cd/dvd will lose money? Is it because it's easier to scratch up/break a cd/dvd, hence more profit?

I haven't bought a CD/DVD game for about 3 or 4 years now.
Hopefully i'll never have to again.

Soo... does that mean you only download? Or do you just not buy games anymore?

Or maybe you started collecting dos games on floppy?

These days, technology rapidly evolves. When "they" went from cartridge to disc, I suppose "they" didn't think that more information could eventually be compressed to be contained within a cartridge.

As for why things are on discs, maybe the market is still rather wary of fully embracing all-digital ownership over music, movies and games. Who knows?

Flash memory is more expensive per MB, DVDs are super cheap.

I only download games now from digital distributors (like steam).

Why would you want a cartridge? Discs are cheap to produce and convenient enough until we can all get enough bandwidth to go entirely downloadable. I'm stuck right now where the only internet I can get is CLEAR mobile broadband which is technically unlimited but they SEVERELY cap your bandwidth rather quickly. My max speed on a good day is like 60 kb/s, on a bad day it can drop to 12 kb/s. After my billing cycle rolled over I thought it'd get better until I capped out again, but no, still slow.

I'm not sure if it's because pretty much everyone on base uses CLEAR (well tech students who live in the dorms where you can't get anything installed) or what.

Last month I only used something like 36gb which would be only a handful of games. That said I don't do a lot of gaming anymore anyway.

This can be seen by either buying a 4gb flashdrive vs buying 50 4.7gb dvds.

I don't like downloading. Cause you know, one day...

"We have revoked and uninstalled your copy Mass Call Gears of Duty Effect War 76, for one month, due to reports from players that you have been using offensive language during several multiplayer matches."

I thought you could get a 12gb flash for the price of 50 dvds...

I don't think, or hope rather, that we'll ever entirely leave physical formats behind.

For the same reason people still listen to music on and own Vinyl or CD's when there are obvious options that hold more music and require less maintenance.

People like to feel like they own something, software in a physical format is tangible whereas streamed content is ethereal.

Its a discussion that won't go away anytime soon.

Depends where and what brands you buy. The fact of the matter is, 50 4.7gb dvds is WAY more than 12gb.

Now when you start talking BD, I can only assume the price will come down on them as time goes on and I don't think a 50gb BD come close to the price as say a 64gb flashdrive.

This, of course. A DVD can be printed for pennies. Any type of flash ROM cartridge would be a lot more expensive to manufacture.

wholesale prices on optical media is many, many times lower than the wholesale price of flash media. There's absolutely no comparison between the two.

Yeah, but like Nintendo was doing with the 64, they could charge higher liscensing fees.

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