Just in response to the simple soul that disagrees....

The Games Industry as we know it would crumble...because a lot of folks would be priced out....and this is why the industry shouldn't completely do away with the used game market either - an amicable/fair solution needs to be found.

I have read/heard much rhetoric about gaming being a luxury that if you cannot afford it, find an affordable hobby.

...My answer to this selfish group of elitists is that this particular industry is reliant on 'Mass Market' penetration to be economically viable.

Guess what?

Mass Market means 'Everyone' ...you, me and the low income person/family that lives nearby or on your street!

...and if I can save $20 - $30 on each game, I am sure I can live with disc loading times as opposed to the instant nature of the expensive Cartridge/SSD format.

Thats alot of yes. Article wasnt that much of a read :L

Look no further than the NeoGeo of old. Those 'carts' were not small in size... or price.

I pretty much dismissed the article at the opening paragraph with the Wii U using DVD9 claim... Hogwash. As many above have stated, Wii U uses a proprietary Bluray-based format so the guy writing the article clearly didn't do much research before banging his claws on the keyboard.

But that's not the only uninformed part of the article. The author seems to think that ROM and Flash Memory are interchangeable. Carts of old were on ROM, hence why they loaded near instantly (helped obviously by the tiny size of games). Flash Memory isn't anywhere near as fast modern ROM - hence the loading screens on large mobile games. And the cost of several gigs of ROM in a cartridge would push the games into Neo Geo territory!

Other than a gain in durability there's not really any advantage to using cartridges for massive games due to the speed of cost effective Flash Memory. Now if we could get rid of those pesky loading screens with some future technology that doesn't cost the earth, count me in!

It's generally harder to pirate cartridge games. That alone means that it's going to be seriously considered by console manufacturers.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest benefits of cartridge media - the short load times - seems to have been abandoned. The flash memory used in Vita game cards and, to a lesser extent, 3DS game cards is pretty low class. It's less of an issue on the 3DS for whatever reason, but I haven't met a Vita owner that didn't complain about the load times.

Either way, it'd just be a stopgap measure until somebody takes the plunge and foregoes physical games entirely in favor of digital distribution. Because of the cost and the current pace of technology, I think they'd stick with optical storage this round because it's not worth investing all that R&D and reducing revenues to support something that will probably be abandoned five years from now.

Physical memory formats are subject to wild fluctuations in price. Even with memory being cheaper now, it only takes one natural disaster for prices to skyrocket.

Generally static memory formats are fine for smaller games, such as Vita, 3DS, etc, as the smaller chips aren't as subject to those fluctuations.

However, disc based prices constantly go down every year. There is enough redundancy and competition in the pressed disc manufacturer market to keep the prices low. In addition, Blu-Ray is capable of supporting various discs sizes, 25, 50, 100, 200(theoretically). This means that they're much more scalable to the needs of the individual game.

In addition, next gen machines are going to be media centers. One primary focus we can be almost assured of for the next gen is going to be media playback. As such it would make a lot more market sense to include a disc playback device(Blu-Ray player). Since it's there, there is no reason for them to go to cartridges, and it would only cost more for them to make it use both.

Also, the author seemed to imply that the lasers create a lot of heat. Which is just untrue. The systems themselves will still run hot due to the chips being used, and there's no cheap way around that. They can wear out, or go bad, but I don't think that issue is as prevalent as it was in the PS1/PS2 days, as the technology is exponentially better now.

The only real advantage to cartridges is load times. And they can be exponentially better than the best optical reader. However, with the publisher focusing more on profitability, it's very hard to see them moving to the more expensive medium, particularly when they would much rather push digital sales.

Helix will be expensive but it's still a day one for me.

Oh, my days...
So Nadella meets with the US president multiple times to ensure AI regulations are minimal if any at all, donates to the inauguration and ballroom, and his boy not only won't regulate AI as farmers lose land and billionaires/corporations buy up farmland to build data centers...but because he's insane and compromised, he starts a war on behalf of a rogue colonial zionist state and [further] destabilizes the Middle East, restricting component access and helium supply.

Now the head of Xbox is saying the hardware pricing "could impact" next generation hardware pricing? Asha,...your boss at a minimum played a direct role in this. What are we even talking about?

Yea because a $3 trillion company can’t absorb the majority of the cost to keep the product lower for consumers.

Expensive… oh no, here comes another flop.

Could? Strange how prices rise for virtually everything we buy, yet when things settle down, prices don't come down. This has been happening in the UK probably before I was born. With that, how much is a next gen console going to cost? Look at the price of the PlayStation 5 Pro, which has been a flop for Sony. On that note, we don't need the next consoles for another 5 years.

I guarantee if people just stopped buying this kinda stuff all together. This would all be sorted within 2 weeks and everything would be back to normal.

We seen the exact same thing through the COVID period. Companies just jumped on the bandwagon realising that they can get away with charging far more under false pretences and fear mongering.

Consumers now have this fear of "you know what, I only live once. I'm going to spend all this money I earned through my hard work" Or "I only live once I'm going to take a loan out and enjoy my time here".

Silicone Valley spends literally billions of dollars researching how much they can push society to the limits to increase spending. You can research it yourself. There's published written documentation about it. Have a look for yourself into their group research into subscription programs to see how evil they are and why it's such a giant focus of current civilization. Its the very essence of corporate capitalism.

Just delay all new consoles. I could easily go another 5 years with my base PS5.

could? it's already affecting current gen pricing.

It is greed. Apple are selling at the same price, while Microsoft Surface increases 500$ per unit. Karma will tell.