While carts aren't that expensive, and blurays aren't free - I think the costs for a cart holding assets for a portable version (4-8GB?) vs costs for a home version (25GB) would be significantly different and enough to consider an alternative approach.
Of course the home console could just have a bluray drive.
They're really not. And more importantly, if you want your platform to be an "ecosystem" and stay relatively static long-term so as not to succumb to the "hardware cycle" like Nintendo has talked about multiple times now, you have to think of what will be used 10 years down the line, not what is in use now.
And optical storage is hitting a threshold that it can't cross, with new optical media technology investments cratering because people aren't buying physical media for movies and audio, which are the markets that really drive investment in optical storage technology. Meanwhile, the desire for NAND increases year-over-year and has yet to meet a storage limitation that it couldn't overcome handily.
And then you factor in that, if it can be as large as a 3DS cart, maybe even slightly larger, you're not required to pay the costs associated with fabricating miniaturized NAND, cutting back on production cost again.
And no, the cost doesn't increase that much when doubling or tripling the capacity with NAND flash cards, even when they are miniaturized.
Using a single physical media for both handheld and home console has a variety of cost related benefits outside the realm of production costs. It makes inventory management and relationships with retailers far easier. Allowing retailers to have a single "Nintendo" section full of games that play on either form factor would be favorable for all parties.
Nintendo would take a hit on production costs, but there would be significant advantages, too.
Yes, the actual logistics become much easier to manage, as I have discussed every time this is brought into the discussion.
Carts allow for less packaging materials, fewer skids shipped with more copies on them, better copy protection options to reduce piracy, inventory management of fewer SKUs and less retail space required (though these are mostly a Nintendo-only benefit at the moment)...
Just in those cost savings alone, the cost of the cart could balance out.
I'm still conflicted as to what type of storage solution I expect Nintendo to take. They could very well stick a Gamecard slot on the NX console (or controller), but 64 GB cartridges still seem to belong in the realm of fantasy. Some of you may want to read some of the posts in
this Beyond3D thread on the topic. Digital downloads are what Nintendo want to move towards and possibly in combination with a small capacity Gamecard or NFC "key" for authentication. For games requiring a large amount of storage, besides digital, optical media is still the cheapest way to go. It's best for the consumer, publisher, and retailer. Nintendo will figure out a way to pull off crossplay (if that's truly what they want for most games) that does not require a 64 GB "cart".
I read the thread and had to stop when they were spouting outright lies. Capacity increases in Blu-Ray supposedly double their production costs, for one, as higher capacities generate a higher quantity of discs with read-write errors, so people throwing around "similar costs" are basically full of shit, and that seems to be what is used as the primary talking point for keeping optical media.
And that's also when you see that the majority of the conversation seems focused on replacing hard drives in consoles, not the optical drive. So...
Even 32 GB requires Nintendo develop a whole new distribution format rather than including a bog standard optical drive (even an external one would work).
This post goes into some of those costs
[...]
There's just alot weighing against such a distribution method. That's not even getting into the problem of excess inventory, which is also brought up in that thread.
Developing the housing for a NAND flash solution isn't exactly rocket science. And there's already several copy-protection solutions available that have yet to be broken.
And, let's not forget, this is a cost Nintendo would HAVE to spend anyways, since 1 of their 2 form factors would require the use of a cartridge, so there's no actual savings being had by foregoing it.
Also, can you point out the quote from that thread about excess inventory? I'm not seeing how this is somehow a specific problem that only negatively effects cartridges somehow.
If Nintendo really wants to get 3rd parties back on their platform, they need a Blu-Ray drive. It's as easy as it sounds. For 3rd parties, every penny matters. They wont pay 5US$ on a NAND or any other storage device if a single Blu-Ray costs a fragment of that. No chance.
If that USD$5 per cart is made up by a USD$4.50 savings in logistics per unit, I really don't think they're going to care much. And that's assuming the USD$5 price is something it would legitimately cost them.
And as others have stated, this is without factoring in that Nintendo could amortize these costs on the behalf of 3rd-parties.
Or without factoring in how handheld game makers will be thrilled to have 2 pieces of hardware to sell their game for with a single SKU.
I was wondering if someone else said something I missed.
