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Another report claims Nintendo's NX will use cartridges instead of discs

This report corroborates a financial briefing made by the Chinese company responsible for manufacturing the carts Nintendo uses for 3DS games.

David Craddock

September 2, 2016 3:34 PM

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The Wall Street Journal has published a report stating that sources "familiar with the matter" claim Nintendo's upcoming NX console will run games on cartridges instead of optical media (via Polygon).

"Industry watchers said cartridges were a reasonable choice for Nintendo’s next-generation system, code-named NX, because the company targets a wider range of consumers than Sony or Microsoft," per the Wall Street Journal. "Nintendo’s core fans include small children, who might scratch discs but find cartridges tougher to damage. Cartridges also allow games to load faster, are harder to copy and can be mass-produced faster than discs, they said."

The Wall Street Journal's source corroborates another report from this spring. A financial briefing by Chinese manufacturer Macronix indicated that it expected ROM sales to spike later this year when production of NX games is expected to ramp up in anticipation of the console's projected March 2017 launch.

What's important to note is that Macronix did not indicate whether it expects an increase in production of special 32GB ROM chips (effectively flash media). Assuming it does, that naturally leads to speculation concerning whether NX cartridges would be comparable to games released on PS4 and Xbox One.

3DS games are burned to 8GB ROM carts. Assuming Macronix applies its 32GB ROMs to NX cartridges (and assuming NX winds up using cartridges at all), games for Nintendo's new consoles would be four times the size of 3DS carts, but still short of the max capacity of a Blu-ray.

Consider, though, that optical discs are increasingly considered a bottleneck. Processors, GPUs, and RAM are significantly faster than the read/write speed of an optical drive. This is why PS4 and Xbox One install games first: without installation, every other hardware component would be forced to wait for the optical drive to catch up. Out of all three current-gen consoles, only the Wii U actually loads data from discs.

Other write-ups opine that a major drawback of cartridges, their high production costs passed on to consumers in the form of sticker-shock-inducing price tags, would be curtailed. Ars Technica pointed out that although manufacturing ROMs would likely cost more than pressing discs, wholesale costs would be trivial compared to, say, the $80 MSRP commonly associated with N64 cartridges—one of many reasons why the original PlayStation steamrolled N64 in sales.

Moreover, Nintendo's FY2017 projections stated that it does not expect to sell NX at a loss; cutting an optical drive from each unit would cause a nontrivial reduction in costs.

Perhaps Nintendo and Macronix will use ROM chips with more capacity than 32GB, or perhaps that's the size they'll go with and hope they can make it work. Until Nintendo finally reveals NX, no one knows for sure.

David Craddock

Long Reads Editor

David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of the Stay Awhile and Listen series, and the Gairden Chronicles series of fantasy novels for young adults. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing Mario, Zelda, and Dark Souls games, and will be happy to discuss at length the myriad reasons why Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series. Follow him online at davidlcraddock.com and @davidlcraddock.