Zenoth
Diamond Member
I'm just curious, I had an interesting conversion with a friend lately, we just discussed about the inconveniences and some of the "advantages" of having cartridge-based and compact disc-based console gaming co-existing only a few years ago. Well now of course today anyone like me (since I did it a few times) can go on the Internet and buy used and old but beloved consoles and still play them today in the same room with your HDTV and whatnots, but when we were discussing that we were simply referring to that period in gaming history when both technologies were not considered either "too old" nor "too good".
I, for one at least, still remember back during the late Sega Saturn and early PlayStation days (also during the Sega CD days but that was to a much lesser extent) when in gaming magazines (the major source of information and "mass" discussions about gaming outside of the still "rarely accessible and still expensive Internet for most gamers" days) there were articles debating about the "uncertain" future of the then-new compact disc-based games and how the then-aging-but-still-good-and-standard cartridges would hold up against that newly arrived media.
We know what happened, of course, but... today...
Wouldn't it be good? I mean, yes I'm asking if it would be good, fun, but not if it would be feasible per se, since I am quite certain that in the industry and with today's technologies it would surely be possible to "do it" on a purely technical point of view. But, you know, when I see USB memory sticks (flash memory mostly) being able to hold up to a mind-boggling 64GB of data (which by itself is way beyond any current "large sized" game anyway), and especially looking at their actual physical size, I can't help but think about such little, portable memory devices being inserted into a next-generation game console à-la SNES and Genesis and just having a loading-process-free gaming experience again after all those years of compact disc media.
I don't know how financially acceptable and lucrative it could be, or how much it would cost, I do remember that cartridges back then were more expensive to produce than CD-Roms, but that was back in the days... how about now? Has it changed "enough" for such a market to spawn anew? Imagine... buying games the size of a USB Flash Drive, being able to transport three, four or five of your favorite games in one of your pockets at a friends place, imagine how smaller the gaming console itself might be? All of the mechanisms to leave place for a DVD and to spin it would be gone, and cartridges today being inevitably much smaller than the "bulky" (in comparison) NES ones, no?
Can you imagine such big-size-data-holding cartridges being able to hold not only the game itself but your saved game files as well? Hey, no need for separate memory cards anymore, or better yet, what about just getting rid of a hard-drive in such a next-gen console altogether? It would cost less, be smaller, cooler, more energy-efficient... a green-friendly console, I can even image the famous multi-games-cartridges making a come back! What do you guys think of all this?
I guess that I can ask a few main questions: If the technologies and market permit such a thing to happen, how would you react to that? Would you hesitate to buy a "next-generation" cartridge-based console «AGAIN?!»? Would you simply jump on it in a heart-beat? Would you just not mind at all as long as the games are good?
I, for one at least, still remember back during the late Sega Saturn and early PlayStation days (also during the Sega CD days but that was to a much lesser extent) when in gaming magazines (the major source of information and "mass" discussions about gaming outside of the still "rarely accessible and still expensive Internet for most gamers" days) there were articles debating about the "uncertain" future of the then-new compact disc-based games and how the then-aging-but-still-good-and-standard cartridges would hold up against that newly arrived media.
We know what happened, of course, but... today...
Wouldn't it be good? I mean, yes I'm asking if it would be good, fun, but not if it would be feasible per se, since I am quite certain that in the industry and with today's technologies it would surely be possible to "do it" on a purely technical point of view. But, you know, when I see USB memory sticks (flash memory mostly) being able to hold up to a mind-boggling 64GB of data (which by itself is way beyond any current "large sized" game anyway), and especially looking at their actual physical size, I can't help but think about such little, portable memory devices being inserted into a next-generation game console à-la SNES and Genesis and just having a loading-process-free gaming experience again after all those years of compact disc media.
I don't know how financially acceptable and lucrative it could be, or how much it would cost, I do remember that cartridges back then were more expensive to produce than CD-Roms, but that was back in the days... how about now? Has it changed "enough" for such a market to spawn anew? Imagine... buying games the size of a USB Flash Drive, being able to transport three, four or five of your favorite games in one of your pockets at a friends place, imagine how smaller the gaming console itself might be? All of the mechanisms to leave place for a DVD and to spin it would be gone, and cartridges today being inevitably much smaller than the "bulky" (in comparison) NES ones, no?
Can you imagine such big-size-data-holding cartridges being able to hold not only the game itself but your saved game files as well? Hey, no need for separate memory cards anymore, or better yet, what about just getting rid of a hard-drive in such a next-gen console altogether? It would cost less, be smaller, cooler, more energy-efficient... a green-friendly console, I can even image the famous multi-games-cartridges making a come back! What do you guys think of all this?
I guess that I can ask a few main questions: If the technologies and market permit such a thing to happen, how would you react to that? Would you hesitate to buy a "next-generation" cartridge-based console «AGAIN?!»? Would you simply jump on it in a heart-beat? Would you just not mind at all as long as the games are good?
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