• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Nintendo files patent application for stationary game console without optical disk

With the advancement in cartidges and the fact that disk drives have make the Wii and the WiiU more prone to failure than any other Ninty console....

You know what I like this. I wanted a cart based console again.
 

Neoxon

Junior Member
Full digital Nintendo?

Do we even want them to attempt that?
Not full digital, but rather a return to cartridge-based consoles. This would make sense if they want the console & handheld to share most of the same games & scale them to the respective system's power.
 

Somnid

Member
These are hypotheticals, it's less important to worry about the implementation details than the ideas.

It's basically describing a console with hardware emulation for reading from an older type of media. That's really it.
 

Hexa

Member
So a while ago I met with a patent lawyer about an idea I had. He said that you cannot patent something if it's just taking already invented things and sticking them together, even if no one has put all those pieces together before. You have to have something truly new and novel.

It looks like this patent hinges on point 20 and following, which is of course spruced up patent logic, but sounds like backwards compatibility to me. But perhaps in some new way.

Yup. If it's just combining things in a way that anyone familiar with the art at the time of invention, you get a 103 rejection, AKA for obviousness.
Personally at first look, I don't think any of the claims really seem allowable, but we'll see.
 
yeah, lets be serious



SD cards can be absolutely huge. I don't think space is the problem there. Its more about production costs of the cards themselves. There are 32 GB sd cards for less than $20 and that's enough space to house maaaaaaaany of the games you buy today during this gen.

But the price of that 32 gb card to a blue ray is gonna be a lot more. Is Nintendo gonna eat that cost or are they gonna pass it on to the consumer. $85 games would be bad.
 

Oregano

Member
It's the inability to share games between in-house multiple units that irks me. Absolutely no point in buying digital on the 3DS if you have more than one. I'm about to have a 3DS and three 2DS this Christmas, and I've obviously stopped buying digital.

That is an issue but I don't think any of the console vendors are particularly big fans of being able to share across multiple consoles. Nintendo is just (much, much) more restrictive.
 
R

Rösti

Unconfirmed Member
I almost ran out of characters so underlining is gonna be a bit tricky. But it shouldn't be needed anyway.
 
Not full digital, but rather a return to cartridge-based consoles. This would make sense if they want the console & handheld to share most of the same games & scale them to the respective system's power.
it also wouldn't piss retailers off and make shipping a lot easier. instead of releasing a wii u and 3ds version of smash, they could just release NX Smash, and it works for both. its actually smart, smarter than anything i could think of.
 
How much a bluray drive compared to the cost of reading carts?

How many games can technically be manufactured before carts become more expensive?

Keep in mind, most Nintendo games are under 10GB on the WiiU. 16 GB might be enough for them.
 
They could do a lot with carts:

  • Custom designs (imagine retro NES/SNES/N64 style cards)
  • NFC built into the cart/card for Amiibo and other items
  • Bring your game/save data over to your friends house without dealing with re-downloading
 

Oregano

Member
it also wouldn't piss retailers off and make shipping a lot easier. instead of releasing a wii u and 3ds version of smash, they could just release NX Smash, and it works for both. its actually smart, smarter than anything i could think of.

I think people overestimate how pissed off retailers would be. Here in the UK Game sells eShop codes for lower than the price on the actual eShop. Nintendo would work something out with them.
 

jph139

Member
Man I could definitely go for a return to carts. Considering how cheap and plentiful SD cards and USBs are, I think it's feasible... practical, though, is another question.
 
Is that memory card their new physical format? If not, I don't think a digital-only console would go over well with the general public. Data caps & limited access to the internet are still real problems that need to be overcome before a digital-only system can be accepted by consumers.

Honestly the best way to do that is to force internet companies to remove data caps by increasing demand for digital goods. Having digital as the only option certainly helps push that agenda. The internet companies have said time and time again that people don't need faster internet. If none of the big players move to digital-only because the infrastructure isn't there yet it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 

Crocodile

Member
Sticking with carts for the N64 really hurt Nintendo with 3rd parties and started the decline of their empire. Why would that be different now, because SD technology is relatively cheap? Won't that still cost more for 3rd parties than Blu-Rays? Forgive my ignorance if this is a dumb question.
 
I think people overestimate how pissed off retailers would be. Here in the UK Game sells eShop codes for lower than the price on the actual eShop. Nintendo would work something out with them.
thing is retail games arent dead yet, the safe option to not get people mad is to provide for both the physical and digital space. That way everyone is pleased
 

Oregano

Member
Sticking with carts for the N64 really hurt Nintendo with 3rd parties and started the decline of their empire. Why would that be different now, because SD technology is relatively cheap? Won't that still cost more for 3rd parties than Blu-Rays? Forgive my ignorance if this is a dumb question.

SD technology is not only relatively cheap but the rate at which costs decrease is very fast and the rate at which size increases is much faster than optical media.
 

Phoenixus

Member
Didn't later NES and SNES carts house extra hardware for beefing up games like the Super FX chip for Starfox? Would love to see something like that happen again if Carts for consoles make a comeback.
 

Jebusman

Banned
Sticking with carts for the N64 really hurt Nintendo with 3rd parties and started the decline of their empire. Why would that be different now, because SD technology is relatively cheap? Won't that still cost more for 3rd parties than Blu-Rays? Forgive my ignorance if this is a dumb question.

The difference is that at the time, the space a cartridge could hold was widely limited compared to a CD (Biggest N64 cart was 64MB, versus 700MB on a plain CD).

Nowadays, SD cards range up into sizes that rival and exceed BluRay. And aren't priced terribly either.
 

Oregano

Member
thing is retail games arent dead yet, the safe option to not get people mad is to provide for both the physical and digital space. That way everyone is pleased

True but if push came to shove retailers could work with DD-only. Including DD codes with Amiibos would also be a great way to keep physical retail presence.

Not that I think it will be DD-only.-
 

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
Sticking with carts for the N64 really hurt Nintendo with 3rd parties and started the decline of their empire. Why would that be different now, because SD technology is relatively cheap? Won't that still cost more for 3rd parties than Blu-Rays? Forgive my ignorance if this is a dumb question.

We arent paying 80 bucks for handheld games because of cartridges - producing them must be way cheaper compared to Snes/n64 modules back then.

Also if every game is more or less cross buy and works on portable and Homeconsole it will be easy to justify a 50 buck price point.
 
Didn't later NES and SNES carts house extra hardware for beefing up games like the Super FX chip for Starfox? Would love to see something like that happen again if Carts for consoles make a comeback.

Star Fox NX using the new Super FX3 chip! lol.

It does sound interesting with all the options they could use with carts. Discs don't do anything but hold the game data.
 
The games industry would flip their shit if they had to pay for the carts the size of modern games.

When games are already so expensive no one wants to take that kind of hit in their margins.
 

Rich!

Member
Carts?

It's n64 all over again. Fuck industry standards son

the flash cards of today are in no way comparable to the ram/rom based carts of the 90s.

If anything, discs are the medium that is on a lifeline right now, not flash media.
 
This is all too much to process, but I'm doing it slowly.

Is the first memory a solid state perhaps?

Is the speed control unit to help w/ emulation and compatibility across different hardware?

Very exciting stuff!
 
Top Bottom