Friday, May 20, 2016

Which Is Better? Discs OR Cartridges?

Their have been many a rumors that the upcoming Nintendo NX would go back to cartridges like the old days of gaming, but which is actually better?

Which Is Better? Discs OR Cartridges? video games
 

Lets start by going back to why the switch to discs was done back in the day. While discs had slower load times (By a significant amount back in the day), cartridges held less data, which is way some games like Final Fantasy moved over to the Playstation instead of sticking to the Nintendo 64.

But these day the load times of discs while still slow then cartridges it is much faster than before in many cases. While cartridges still hold less data the difference isn't as much as before either.

In the end both have their advantages and disadvantages and one could argue either side. So I'll just go by the one thing that stands out to me for both sides. Disc have larger capacity for a better price while cartridges have possibility for hardware expansion.

What do I mean by "hardware expansion"?
Mostly recognized in the classic Super Nintendo Entertainment System, some of the games had additional hardware in the cartridges to allow the console to do more then what it could do before. Most notably was the Super FX chip that allowed the console to render simple 3D polygon. It was because of these different kinds of chips put in the cartridges that allowed the Super Nintendo to live for so long and even allowed Nintendo to skip making a 32 Bit console

Which would I choose, Discs or Cartridges?
Personally I would go with "Cartridges" because then the developers won't have to be limited by the immediate limitations of the console.

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