this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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The transition away from discs is not inherently bad. Discs read very slowly. Cartridges are better for load times.
I always wondered why we didn’t transition to flash storage. Would be much easier to scale smaller releases, too.
The Switch went back to it, or never left if you view it as a DS/3DS successor
I thought about this right after replying. Really, the GC, Wii and Wii U were more exception than rule with Nintendo. They’ve always liked their cartridge formats.
I remember Nintendo getting trolled for still using cartridges with the Nintendo 64 when Sony was already using discs and it looked like the future. Nintendo’s response even then was the cartridges were faster, basically eliminating load time.
If only they could have figured out storage density back then.
Losing the RPGs to Sony was devastating to someone expecting (hoping) the N64 would be as good to the jrpg as the snes was.
People seem weirdly attached to the idea of discs, in my experience. Without anything but anecdotes to back it up, I feel like people view discs as adult and cartridges as childish.
Might be a generational thing you're perceiving. For someone about my age, carts were what we used as little kids (NES, SNES) and a little longer if you stuck with Nintendo (N64) over PlayStation. The PlayStation kids tended to view Nintendo as "kid stuff."
Yes, I've considered that. Nintendo has mostly stuck to cartridges and their games are mostly cartoony, which is associated with childishness.
I feel like most people don't care they just want physical media and not be required to only go digital.
Actually, in that regard I feel like the majority of people are fine with the transition to fully digital.
I doubt most are fine with it, but its not a priority enough to not buy a specific game.
Switch carts are way easier to lose for one. Hard to lose a blu ray in my experience
Disc was way cheaper to produce
Nothing can reach an nvme drive. I heard Switch 2 had longer loading times from cartridges vs loading from internal storage or micro SD express card. And there is no way to store 100+GB games in there. Yeah textures in 4k hurt.
Kinda moot these days when everything is using flash storage. Transfering a Blu-Ray to storage at 100MB/s before playing is an acceptable compromise if it means you can use the fastest possible storage for all games, without the cost.
Of course, this wouldn't work on a portable not named PSP
I rather a game load a little bit slower than having to spend hundreds more for expanded storage or waste hours manually installing and uninstalling games.
I think you're probably in the minority on that one.