Hardware What storage media 3DS will use?

[Rydian]

SD cards

That'd be dumb.
Plug it in the computer. Bam! Dump the game easily!

Hey, the Dsi uses it right now and some people thought we would be able to put games and play it

The difference is with those it's encrypted differently for each system it's put on, and it's put on the system and encrypted before you get a chance to put it on the SD.

With a retail SD cart it couldn't be encrypted like that before play, otherwise it wouldn't work.

 

[davidsl_128]

Well it'll probably be a cart, I mean nowdays you can get a 2GB flashdrive for a little more than $10, so making a cart that holds as much or more data than a mini DVD shouldn't be hard; and since portables are in constant movement, DVDs would scratch more easily than on regular home consoles (that's IMO, never really had a scratched disk except for Zelda TP on Wii). If the 3DS really has GameCube-like graphics, a 2GB (or even 1GB) cart would be perfect.

Who knows? Maybe Nintendo will treat us with 4GB carts! Only time will tell...

 

[granville]

SD cards

That'd be dumb.
Plug it in the computer. Bam! Dump the game easily!

Hey, the Dsi uses it right now and some people thought we would be able to put games and play it

I am fairly sure you can't put the games on the SD card. They're held on the internal storage which cannot be dumped. SD is used only for music and photos if i'm not mistaken. Not the DSiWare games.

I think it'll be cartridges as usual. Probably slightly different shaped DS carts or something. We've already reached 512MB DS games with the first one having been dumped just the other day. That's close to CD size (700MB). Shouldn't be long before we have 1-2GB capacity in cartridges. Nothing holding them back besides price. And that is Gamecube size, plenty of space for any game. By the time 3DS is established, i think we'll have near DVD capacity cartridges. We have the technology to get bluray capacity flash memory, only limit is price. And flash is always coming down, a lot lately.

 

[Peelbash]

Well it'll probably be a cart, I mean nowdays you can get a 2GB flashdrive for a little more than $10, so making a cart that holds as much or more data than a mini DVD shouldn't be hard; and since portables are in constant movement, DVDs would scratch more easily than on regular home consoles (that's IMO, never really had a scratched disk except for Zelda TP on Wii). If the 3DS really has GameCube-like graphics, a 2GB (or even 1GB) cart would be perfect.

Who knows? Maybe Nintendo will treat us with 4GB carts! Only time will tell...

Wasn't there a Level-5 game with a 4gb cart? Ninokuni?

 

[gameguy95]

SD cards

That'd be dumb.
Plug it in the computer. Bam! Dump the game easily!

Hey, the Dsi uses it right now and some people thought we would be able to put games and play it

I am fairly sure you can't put the games on the SD card. They're held on the internal storage which cannot be dumped. SD is used only for music and photos if i'm not mistaken. Not the DSiWare games.

I think it'll be cartridges as usual. Probably slightly different shaped DS carts or something. We've already reached 512MB DS games with the first one having been dumped just the other day. That's close to CD size (700MB). Shouldn't be long before we have 1-2GB capacity in cartridges. Nothing holding them back besides price. And that is Gamecube size, plenty of space for any game. By the time 3DS is established, i think we'll have near DVD capacity cartridges. We have the technology to get bluray capacity flash memory, only limit is price. And flash is always coming down, a lot lately.

yes you can put games on the SD card.

 

[granville]

I didn't know that. I still don't think they'll go download only though. Seeing what a horrid failure PSP Go was...

 

[Depravo]

5.25 floppies.

 

[redact]

Well it'll probably be a cart, I mean nowdays you can get a 2GB flashdrive for a little more than $10, so making a cart that holds as much or more data than a mini DVD shouldn't be hard; and since portables are in constant movement, DVDs would scratch more easily than on regular home consoles (that's IMO, never really had a scratched disk except for Zelda TP on Wii). If the 3DS really has GameCube-like graphics, a 2GB (or even 1GB) cart would be perfect.

Who knows? Maybe Nintendo will treat us with 4GB carts! Only time will tell...

Wasn't there a Level-5 game with a 4gb cart? Ninokuni?

it is 4Gb
which is 512MB

 

[fgghjjkll]

I think they will still use the cartridges. Nintendo never give up on them unless they really HAVE too...

"Cartridges can be read faster and has built in memory to write to opposed to that optical media Sony uses" is probably what Nintendo is thinking...

 

[Rydian]

yes you can put games on the SD card.

However you can't transfer them to other machines, because they're encrypted specifically for your DS when they're first downloaded.

 

[ProtoKun7]

Wasn't there a Level-5 game with a 4gb cart? Ninokuni?
it is 4Gb
which is 512MB

Someone else that knows what they're talking about.

QUOTE(gameguy95 @ Apr 11 2010, 06:10 PM)

yes you can put games on the SD card.

However you can't transfer them to other machines, because they're encrypted specifically for your DS when they're first downloaded.

And though you can transfer them to the SD, I'm not actually sure that you can play them from the SD card. That might be totally wrong and maybe you can, as I actually haven't tried removing any from the internal memory and running them.

 

[davidsl_128]

"Cartridges can be read faster and has built in memory to write to opposed to that optical media Sony uses" is probably what Nintendo is thinking...

That. I don't think I've ever seen a "Loading" screen on a cartridge system.

 

[YayMii]

"Cartridges can be read faster and has built in memory to write to opposed to that optical media Sony uses" is probably what Nintendo is thinking...

That. I don't think I've ever seen a "Loading" screen on a cartridge system.

You probably haven't played using a flashcart then. Or probably haven't played Metroid Prime Hunters (that game didn't allow the in-game doors to open until the next room was loaded).

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I'll go with cartridges. It's what Nintendo has always used. Discs (like UMD's) can hold more data, but they lack the ability to save to them and what not. Nintendo would take convenience over space.

And we are getting a 4GB cartridge (or is it 1GB?) soon (it's to be used in The Another World or whatever it's called and the next Inazuma Eleven game), so odds are we'll get larger cartridge space by the time we reach the next gen.

 

[r3dfaction]

I'd say the cart will be smaller than a regular ds since they seem to keep shrinking the cart sizes...

 

[davidsl_128]

I don't think I've ever seen a "Loading" screen on a cartridge system.

You probably haven't played using a flashcart then. Or probably haven't played Metroid Prime Hunters (that game didn't allow the in-game doors to open until the next room was loaded).

Yeah, the usually imperceptible in-game loading takes longer than usual with carts, but it still beats loading on disc-based systems. And did MPH have long loading times? I played once but got bored xD

 

[granville]

Flashcards load games differently. There's an external microSD that you insert into the flashcard itself, so of course it will have to load. Even then though, the loading is only the initial bootup. After that, it's as fast as a real game. A real game though has all its data where it needs it already. It doesn't really need to load anything.

I have seen a couple of instances of load times in cartridge games. Two games i can think of off the top of my head are the SNES version of Mickey Mania, and the DS port of Rayman 2. Oh and also, the SNES version of Civilization. But i think that's bad data management more than anything. I doubt they need the loading times, there's nothing in those games that indicate it needs to load anything.

And keep in mind that cartridges don't really use up much, if any power. UMD's suck battery life fast.

 

[Rydian]

And keep in mind that cartridges don't really use up much, if any power. UMD's suck battery life fast.

Yeah, I played a game from my memory stick on my PSP slim for like an hour on max brightness, checked the battery life and it was at like 93%. I WTF'd at myself before remembering it probably has a battery that's regularly used for UMD stuff. ^^;

 

[Jakob95]

Family Feud for DS loads forever. Plus then why do games on my iPod Touch have to load since its built in memory?

 

[ByteMunch]

probably needs to put the app in a diff dir 4 itouch?

and 4GB retail carts, even trimmed, would we need 32GB sd cards... for about 10 games?