Orniletter
Banned
And saving 30+ bucks for every single console sold (because card readers are far cheaper) adds up to quite a lot too.
In before joke about Nintendo's consoles not selling a lot.
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Speculation based on trademark minutia: Nintendo NX to use cartridges
- Thread starter Smellycat
- Start date
In before joke about Nintendo's consoles not selling a lot.
Refreshment.01
Member
Various disadvatages for 3rd parties actually:
- More expensive than disks.
- Manufacturing process takes longer.
- Less card manufacturing facilities than disk ones.
- Due to the above, the royalties tend to be higher.
- And with all of the above factors, more planning is demanded due to the increased risks.
But concretely, not that i personally think Nintendo cares about third parties, but what's the size of the biggest AAA games, and with all DLC ??
Refreshment.01
Member
Orioto, people also should remember that the industry is moving to UHD. So the storage sizes are going up. For example, the new UHD Blu Ray satnadrad starts at 50 GB and end in 100 GB disks.
There are various AAA games that ship in 50 GB Blu Ray and have aditional dozens of GB's with patches and DLC.
i think there's a way which Nintendo could adapt if they go with cards. But i haven't seen anyone mention it yet XD
test_account
XP-39C²
This will probably be offset by a lower retail price for the system, so i dont think that Nintendo are making any extra on that. Having a cheaper retail price can be a good thing though.
Robottiimu2000
Member
I just wanted you guys to know that these are threads I love about gaf! <3
Orniletter
Banned
Yes !
I didn't want to imply that Nintendo will literally have 30 bucks more in their bank account for every single console they sell, but we have to look at the entire picture.
I wouldn't even put it past Nintendo to eat the higher than Blu-ray manufacturing costs of their cartridges, their margins would allow it.
stan423321
Member
Cards for identification, everything in day one patch? But then they could ditch Macronix and make their very own 1 MiB title key chips. So probably not that.
That works for Nintendo but if a third party wants to sell a million units of Just Dance, Skylanders or whatever that eats into their cut.
Orniletter
Banned
We are in full speculation territory here, but I really wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo would just eat the 1 or 2 bucks difference in manufacturing costs.
They have their backs against the wall, third-party wise, and making some money is still preferable to making like no money on third party games on their platform.
I remember Reading a very long and detailed post by a gaffer who knew what he was talking about arguing that when everything is taken into account cartridges woudnt be much more expensive if at all than discs, mainly because of reduced logistics and falling manifacturing prices. I wish I could find the post.
jedmaxwell
Member
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
Cartridges are cool as hell. Bring 'em back.
Refreshment.01
Member
A Hardware Security Module loses the charm of physical media taught, which is playing the games we own independently of the platform holder's control or online services. So in that sense Macronix is needed.
A rough idea would be:
- Buy your game card.
- It plays either in your mobile or home device.
- The base of the game (code, geometry, etc) is the same. Additional assets such as higher quality textures, music, video can be downloaded to the home base. Maybe paying a small fee that covers server costs and a tiny bit of profit.
That basic model entiles a different set of possibilities in how they could offer the form factors to the user.
Personally i would be pleased if Nintendo this time were "ballsy" an make the handheld the core of the experience. And a cheap Home base similar to a streaming settop box that the handheld could interact with.
ajim
Member
It's ugly but beautiful
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I don't believe it's going to happen, but it would be pretty badass if it did.
stan423321
Member
On the other hand they share some of the benefits too, most notably the shared user base. Given Nintendo's platforms' underdog status this could be a major thing. There's also the fact that the chips such as ones used on 3DS are actually rewritable, so in case one game doesn't sell maybe Nintendo will have some sort of publisher trade-in.
Dagobert Duck
Member
spyroflame0487
Member
Is there any downside to carts instead of a disc based system? Id love to have carts especially if they're small and I could take them with me when visiting a friend.
Perhaps if they're also small they could streamline the packaging, allowing for less retail space so that amiibo/acceasory areas could be expanded?
Perhaps if they're also small they could streamline the packaging, allowing for less retail space so that amiibo/acceasory areas could be expanded?
test_account
XP-39C²
I understand. Seems like Nintendo will go for a cheaper priced system, so this might be a good way to do it.
It's this post by Terrell
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=192728798#post192728798
Terrell said:Since you wanted me to explain myself, I will do so, but considering how long the post is going to be, you (and everyone else in the thread) will wish I had continued going without the detailed analysis. But since there's a LOT of bullshit spouted about distribution on GAF, now is as good a time as any.
Performance in procurement and distribution is typically measured by the amount of inventory turns you get in a year, or how often you have had to replenish your estimated stock levels at your intended destinations. Too many turns and you're over-spending in logistics and have underestimated demand. Too few and you have risked overspending your warehousing costs or may end up with dead stock at destination retailers, which will cause you to again overspend in logistics to re-distribute to regions that have higher sell-through of the product. That being said, items with high sell-through are generally preferred to have the lowest inventory turn you can get, depending on what your warehousing capacity is.
There are 3 major shipping methods for logistics: ocean, air and truck. Nintendo almost definitely uses a combination of all 3 methods. Each has very different pallet size and container weight restrictions. If your pallet is too heavy, you're charged for it. If your pallet is too tall/wide, you're charged for it. You have to strike the right balance, which is nigh impossible, at times. You almost always leave money on the ground, no matter which way you do it. The difference is in how much money that is.
And you have to maximize the usage of each shipping container, as any unused space basically leads to you paying for cargo space that you aren't using, so you avoid shipping pallets that you can't stack, so part of your pallet space is wasted in packing materials to ensure that your merchandise isn't going to be crushed by the pallet you stack on top of it. And you typically have to standardize this packing procedure, as uniquely packing pallets is a huge time-sink for a warehouse to deal with.
Then factor in where your stock has to go once it lands at its destination point, where it enters the rail and road intermodal networks to distribute them to retailers.
With 2 SKUs for each game, you have to make those calculations twice, with an order of magnitude more complexity, as the handheld SKU may have a higher demand in some regions and with some retailers, while others will not.
Since I don't know what the freight/pallet restrictions are for electronics (I mainly moved raw materials to be manufactured in-house), I'm going to have to use rough numbers and a reasonable facsimile of what their actual logistics scenarios could be.
Let's say Nintendo has a game that's launching in about a month. It's just left manufacturing and is ready to ship.
A disc-based SKU is a standard disc in a standard clamshell case, $1.50 to manufacture a piece. In order to ship these, because they can't be stacked loose, they're packaged in boxes that hold about 100 at a time. Of those boxes, in order to meet the size and weight mandates of each shipping method and to pack it with sufficient cushioning, you can only fit 14 boxes on a single pallet. So each pallet holds 1400 copies of a single game. Packing this pallet would cost an extra $2 in materials (pallet, boxes, padding, shrink wrap for the pallet, etc) per box, as a really rough number.
You can load 10 pallets in a 20ft shipping container while still meeting the weight and dimensional restrictions, totalling 14,000 copies per container. You're loading 50 containers to go by ocean freight (as most freight liners ship goods from multiple sources to the same port and that's the most you can allot to the freight liner), totalling 700,000 copies. According to estimates provided by the US government, the cost to ship via ocean from Japan to California, including import/export fees, is $4150 per container, a number that can decrease the more volume you can achieve in a single ocean liner. As a rough number, for 50 containers, let's say their volume shaves that number down to $4000 per container, or $200,000 for the total transportation cost to the port.
Now, you have to collect those containers from the port and send them to a warehouse for re-distribution. Warehouses have limited inventory space. Warehousing costs can vary greatly, depending on if you subcontract or own your own, but let's say the warehousing costs and collection from the port per pallet are averaged to $300.
Next, you have to re-distribute those pallets. To grossly over-simplify, let's say Nintendo only has to send them to one retail chain, who asks to have them sent directly to each of the retailer's distribution centres in 5 US regions. Shipping costs vary depending on origin/destination, but using rail (the slowest method) and assuming these distribution centres are at the railway hubs, let's say all 50 containers cost them $15,000 to ship. This is all assuming that you're sending WHOLE containers and not sending them via smaller amounts.
Let's say every retailer allots the same amount of shelving space. That shelving space is not free. Let's estimate that a 6'x12' dedicated shelf in all their retail outlets costs them a $2,000,000 annual slotting fee (yes, that's totally a thing and typically how places like Walmart actually make their money) and the retailer expects to sell through all 700,000 copies you gave them a month as part of that arrangement..
Nintendo expects to sell 8.4 million copies in the year and keep an extra month of the retailer's inventory needs per month for seasonal sales protection, meaning that they will be required to repeat these costs 13 times in the year. That is your preliminary inventory turn ratio. Meaning the total logistics cost per year for this one SKU is:
Total pallatization costs annually: 500 pallets per shipment x $28 per pallet x 13 = $182,000
Total ocean freight costs annually: $200,000 x 13 = $2,600,000
Total warehousing costs annually: 500 pallets x $300 per pallet x 13 = $1,950,000
Total re-distribution costs annually: $15,000 x 13 = $195,000
Annual slotting fees: $2,000,000
Grand total for yearly logistics: $6.745 million
Grand total for manufacturing: $13.65 million
Total cost per unit annually: $2.24 (74 cents a unit in logistics)
Next you have a cartridge SKU. Assuming they'd be packaged similarly to 3DS games, cartridge plus plastic clamshell case could cost $4 to manufacture in the bulk volume and contract discounts Nintendo would get (but considering that is the presumed estimate for 3DS games using ROM chips, I'd say it's probably lower... but whatever). Because of the smaller size, they can pack them 175 per the same size of box and achieve a similar weight. This nearly doubles the amount of copies you can ship. Let's assume we'll ship the same amount of containers across the ocean and achieve 1.225 million copies for the initial shipment. The retailer now requires less than you can ship, so the warehouse cost will be adjusted up to $450 per pallet. Applying all the same calculations per unit:
Prelim inventory turn ratio - 7.43
Total pallatization costs annually: 500 pallets per shipment x $28 per pallet x 7.43 = $104,020
Total ocean freight costs annually: $200,000 x 7.43 = $1,486,000
Total warehousing costs annually: 500 pallets x $450 per pallet x 7.43 = $1,671,750
Total re-distribution costs annually: $15,000 x 7.43 = $111,450
Annual slotting fees: $2,000,000
Grand total for yearly logistics: $5.37 million
Grand total for manufacturing: $36.4 million
Total cost per unit annually: $4.59 (59 cents per unit in logistics)
You've trimmed your logistics costs by nearly 25% for the entire year on that single SKU and require fewer shipments to achieve the same stocking targets. And that's without me recalculating to shave even more savings by trimming down the packaging.
Let's take that same cartridge and put it in a thinner and smaller clamshell container made of a cheaper to produce plastic (why do you think they did it with Blu-Rays?), cutting that material cost to $3.50 per unit. Now that it's twice as thin and smaller, let's say I can package 300 per box, totalling 4200 per pallet, 42,000 per container and 2.1 million units in a 50-container shipment and the warehousing costs increase to $600 per pallet, as you're now storing the merchandise for much longer than you were originally before it's redistributed to the retailer.
Prelim Inventory turn rate - 3.27
Total pallatization costs annually: 500 pallets per shipment x $28 per pallet x 3.27 = $45,780
Total ocean freight costs annually: $200,000 x 3.27 = $654,000
Total warehousing costs annually: 500 pallets x $600 per pallet x 3.27 = $981,000
Total re-distribution costs annually: $15,000 x 3.27 = $49,050
Annual slotting fees: $2,000,000
Grand total for yearly logistics: $3.73 million
Grand total for manufacturing: $31.85 million
Total cost per unit annually: $3.91 (41 cents per unit in logistics)
Puts it within spitting distance of a disc cost per unit, and all I had to do was trim the fat on product packaging.
Now try managing these numbers for 2 SKUs of essentially the same game and paying the manufacturing costs to have both media types on a shelf. It's messier, harder to manage possible demand and overall less cost-effective. It took me most of my evening to get these calculations done, and that's when I'm spit-balling numbers. With one SKU, that's one set of shipments, one consumer/retailer demand to account for, 1 less SKU that could be left to languish if accidentally over-stocked, which also costs money.
TL
Davey Cakes
Member
If the shared library somehow comes to fruition then the retail space for games themselves would be reduced. Games could be branded across the single NX platform. You're buying one cart to be used in either form factor. The game box can reflect that. "For NX, play on console or handheld."
For the end user, there woudnt be any downsides.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Cartridges, as they were originally introduced, were small ROM* memory chips, which would plug into a memory-expansion bus, so they would map directly into the address space of the CPU. That last bit is very important, as that meant that once the cartridge was in the slot, there was nothing for the game to load - all its assets and code were already in the address space of the CPU!
Cards (MS, SD, etc), in contrast, are just another file medium, with a data-transfer protocol and all. That is, data from them has to be explicitly loaded into the CPU address space - namely in RAM. Cards' great advantage over mechanical file media, particularly optical, comes from seek times - no mechanical parts - no inertia.
So when did ROM cartridge become cards? That I don't know precisely, but I do know the DS carts were already cards, and not ROM cartridges - you had to read their content into the CPU RAM, before you could do anything with that content. The immediate tradeoff from that was that small amounts of directly-mappable memory was substituted for large amounts of memory that had to be loaded chunk by chunk into the CPU address space.
Another thing that cards proliferated was 'flash emulation' - where you get a flash-based device to respond to the data-transfer protocol via a small controller in the middle, so that you could use much larger flash-based media as the physical storage, but the game console would still see those as game cards. That was also possible to do with the ROM cartridges via a small SRAM buffer which would pre-load the desired content from the flash medium, but apparently that was more tricky to implement.
* CD-ROMs, DVDs and BluRay discs are also ROMs, but their access tech supposes a reading mechanisms with a moving head and a disc spinner - something ROM chips don't need.
Cards (MS, SD, etc), in contrast, are just another file medium, with a data-transfer protocol and all. That is, data from them has to be explicitly loaded into the CPU address space - namely in RAM. Cards' great advantage over mechanical file media, particularly optical, comes from seek times - no mechanical parts - no inertia.
So when did ROM cartridge become cards? That I don't know precisely, but I do know the DS carts were already cards, and not ROM cartridges - you had to read their content into the CPU RAM, before you could do anything with that content. The immediate tradeoff from that was that small amounts of directly-mappable memory was substituted for large amounts of memory that had to be loaded chunk by chunk into the CPU address space.
Another thing that cards proliferated was 'flash emulation' - where you get a flash-based device to respond to the data-transfer protocol via a small controller in the middle, so that you could use much larger flash-based media as the physical storage, but the game console would still see those as game cards. That was also possible to do with the ROM cartridges via a small SRAM buffer which would pre-load the desired content from the flash medium, but apparently that was more tricky to implement.
* CD-ROMs, DVDs and BluRay discs are also ROMs, but their access tech supposes a reading mechanisms with a moving head and a disc spinner - something ROM chips don't need.
Thanks
Skittzo0413
Member
I don't know if it's been posted yet but Eradicate wrote up a very nice and detailed thread OP with pros and cons of cartridges for the NX as well as a link to Terrell's excellent post about logistics-
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1209406
This is almost a confirmation to me, combined with Macronix's report about Nintendo's business helping them this year and next when all we really know about is an NX console at this point, with the way Nintendo has been talking about it. Also with Zelda BotW coming out on launch- unless the NX is a really nice portable I have a feeling this means console cartridges are confirmed.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1209406
This is almost a confirmation to me, combined with Macronix's report about Nintendo's business helping them this year and next when all we really know about is an NX console at this point, with the way Nintendo has been talking about it. Also with Zelda BotW coming out on launch- unless the NX is a really nice portable I have a feeling this means console cartridges are confirmed.
Colonel Mustard
Banned
I have NES games made in the late 80s that still work fine with a bit of cleaning. I own PS1 games made in the year 2000, that have have succumb to disc rot.
One big thing that I'm in favour of with the return of cart-based media is the potential of a radically different console design. Without the optical drive (and controller ports) to dictate the design I'd love to see something wild, like a triangular console, just for the hell of it.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
If they're cartridges, I'll be buying far more NX games than I would if they were discs. I'd be venturing into collector territory.
game cards really didn't stop the ds, 3ds, or ps vita from receiving third-party support.
Dark Cloud
Member
Yeah, Macronix basically confirmed this too with the amount of money they're going to get from Nintendo and it's not going to be because of the 3DS lol
shark sandwich
tenuously links anime, pedophile and incels
I would love to see something similar to the GameCube form factor. That was such a cool, smart design.
Whatever it is, I hope they ditch the "3 DVD cases" sized form factor. It's boring and unnecessary if there is no optical drive.
Theanine3D
Member
Inversely, some indie developers (like me) who grew up playing cart-based games on NES and SNES.... get absolutely giddy at the possibility of one day releasing their game on a cart for a Nintendo console.
I definitely agree that AAA were never going to care either way, though. You're not going to see GTA VI on NX regardless of whether it uses carts or not.
Jawbreaker
Member
The nostalgia for cartridges is strong.
Dark Cloud
Member
Idk about you, but I don't think gaming is going to be stuck played on discs forever. It would be nice to see an industry innovation and a move forward just like all technology.
Jawbreaker
Member
You're right: It's moving towards a digital future.
Zombie James
Banned
I don't see Nintendo eating costs for third parties at all.
Carts are a very short-sighted move. You save money up front on hardware costs but third parties and consumers end up paying more for each and every copy of a game.
Dark Cloud
Member
Nope. Not as far as a full console goes. Consumers don't have good internet for that. In the future digital is the way to go. Too bad we're nowhere near there in the United States alone.
Theanine3D
Member
The handle sure wasn't though.
Portugeezer
Member
NX handheld.
Skittzo0413
Member
A return to cards is anything but short-sighted. Nintendo constantly talks about the fact that their digital e-shop sales are constantly on the rise, so they'll be manufacturing less physical games regardless of what format they use.
Returning to cards allows them to future-proof the console, specifically giving them more room on the BoM for better chips versus a knock-off blu-ray drive and giving them a console with a much tinier failure rate, again saving them and the consumer money. Eating costs for third parties is as simple as lowering their licensing royalty by a percent or two, which would have little effect on their overall revenue.
Read Eradicate's thread I linked above, there are some very good points there that people tend to ignore.
Jawbreaker
Member
I'm aware of this, hence "digital future." Discs are great in the interim (though I admit I would rather always have a physical format). However, on PC, things have worked out well on STEAM, and I don't miss discs at all there.
I think It's a safe bet it will look nothing like the Wii, as they are trying to distance themselves from that brand, but what do I know?
Dark Cloud
Member
Yeah, PC is great for Steam, but I'm just saying to say "cartridges are for nostalgia" isn't giving it a fair shake at all. You're not going to see Sony, MS or Nintendo release a digital only console as their one and only system. People have listed the positives for a cart and nostalgia isn't number 1 on that list.