Why Nintendo Makes Tiny Cartridges

the answer to the question why are nintendo switch cartridges so small seems really simple on the surface but there's much more to it in an age where games mainly come in the form of disks nintendo took a while to embrace the medium but now they're right back where they started with cartridges so why is nintendo back at square one while it may sound backwards for nintendo to return to cartridges there are plenty of valid reasons why they did so it turns out that the technology inside these game cards is much more advanced than you might think oftentimes even more advanced than discs so let's start by looking at the most obvious reason why nintendo decided to make small cartridges for the switch portability the switch is nintendo's most innovative console to date they took everything that went wrong with the wii u perfected it and released the switch an incredible hybrid console capable of being played in handheld mode like a nintendo 3ds or on a tv screen like the wii it's a revolutionary console that's been a major hit for nintendo selling over 61 million units worldwide and counting it's just behind the nes as nintendo's second best-selling home console and depending on how long its life cycle is it may end up passing the wheeze over 101 million units sold so yeah saying it's been a smashing success is a little bit of an understatement the whole selling point of the switch being the fact that it's a hybrid console designed to be played at home and on the go it makes perfect sense for the games to come in pint-sized little cartridges which nintendo calls game cards many gamers consider cartridges to be outdated technology which makes sense considering we tend to associate cartridges with the days of the n64 but that's not true at all today's cartridges are often more advanced than discs but we'll get into that a little later in the case of the nintendo switch nintendo didn't really have a choice but to go with game cards let's be honest discs don't work well for portable consoles sure we saw the sony psp use universal media disks aka umds but they were kind of already in their own little casing so they weren't true discs like we see in home consoles regardless when sony came out with the ps vita they took a page out of nintendo's book and scrapped the disks for the use of traditional game cards because they're just better for portable consoles if you're going to use disks with a portable console they need to be very well protected after all there's a reason why they come in well-built cases and are always kept in those cases when not in use they'd also have to be very very tiny so they could fit inside a carrying case and not take up too much space so that the cases don't all have to be made extremely bulky many people throw the switch in a carrying case and then put that case into a backpack so it's constantly moving around and shifting from side to side imagine a bunch of discs in there as well yeah they'd all get scratched up like crazy and it wouldn't end well at all which is why nintendo decided to go with the game card instead the connector pins on the game cards are much more difficult to scratch than the underside of a disc and they're simply just sturdier than discs if you drop a game card it's probably not the end of the world but dropping a disc could shatter it or at least give it a few nasty scratches plus it's not like nintendo's ever stopped making cartridges anyway all of their previous portable consoles such as the game boy and nintendo ds use game cards or something similar so it's not surprising to see them stick with what's worked for them throughout the years in fact we'd have been surprised if they did anything different so if you thought nintendo was just putting switch games into cartridges just to go against the grain that's not the case at all they're making the right decision based on all the facts and information they have at their disposal now let's take a closer look at these nintendo switch game cards and all the impressive tech inside of them switch game cards are smaller than game boy and nintendo ds cartridges but due to the advancements in technology over the years they have a larger storage capacity than all previous versions things just keep getting smaller and more powerful in the tech world and that has not changed in regard to game cartridges either these game cards are non-writable but instead of the save data being stored in the game cards themselves it's saved in the console's internal memory so let's say you want to take the legend of zelda breath of the wild and bring it to your friend's house to show him your save file you won't be able to load up your save file on his switch you'd have to bring your own switch with you to do so which is different from the nintendo ds and 3ds's game cards that are writable and are able to store save data directly onto the cartridge themselves luckily since the switch is portable this isn't a very big deal and it means that switch games are better protected than any other handheld games nintendo has made one interesting fact about the game cards is that they're coated with denatonium benzoate yeah the words are annoying to pronounce but it's a non-toxic bitterness that's used as a safety precaution to prevent young children from consuming the game cards like we said multiple times already these cards are incredibly puny you could easily fit one in your mouth and swallow whole and you know the way babies and toddlers are so it makes sense for nintendo to make their cartridges taste disgusting in an attempt to prevent them from being a choking hazard it's a smart move do not eat that what an idiot and it even gave us memes in the form of people reacting to the bitter taste of the cartridges so it's a win-win for everybody really and honestly who hasn't tasted those nasty nasty boys in terms of capacity there are plenty of different storage sizes for switch game cards there are 1 gigabyte 2 gigabyte 4 8 16 and 32 gigabyte cartridges the size nintendo decides to go with typically depends on the size of the game but the fact that save data isn't stored on the game card means developers could use all the storage strictly for game data and not have to keep space reserved for save data not only does this keep nintendo's games safe but it makes things easier for the developers now that's forward thinking well there are no cartridges bigger than 32 gigabytes 64 gigabyte cartridges were planned to be introduced in 2018 but nintendo delayed the launch of them to 2019 before delaying it once again until sometime in the year 2020 which we wouldn't be surprised at all that gets delayed again considering everything else going on in 2020 still 64 gigabyte cartridges would be a big step forward because it would mean cartridges are getting to the point where they have even more capacity than blu-ray discs which are typically capped at 50 gigs speaking of ssds in 2016 a year before the switch was released samsung unveiled a 512 gigabyte solid-state drive measuring 20 millimeters in height and 16 millimeters in width that has tripled the performance of a typical sata ssd now that's crazy especially when you consider the fact that switch game cards are bigger measuring 31 millimeters by 21 millimeters yeah that means that these tiny 512 gigabyte solid-state drives can fit inside a switch game card the size of a postage stamp so we could be seeing games of up to 512 gigabytes in size playable on portable consoles in the near future game cards are already pretty much little ssds as is with incredible read and write speeds so adding all that storage into the mix means the potential for portable gaming is incredible but let's not get carried away we won't be seeing ps5 or xbox series x quality graphics on portable consoles anytime soon because that requires an advanced cpu and gpu which just doesn't exist quite yet for handhelds plus making games for 512 gigabyte cartridges would be extremely costly so we just can't see developers embracing this until the price comes down just a little bit still this all just goes to show that discs are outdated not cartridges which is why nintendo decided to go back to cartridges instead of making teeny tiny disks for the switch historically it's true that nintendo has always gone against the grain in an attempt to stand out from the crowd and there's nothing wrong with that especially when that crowd is the billion dollar gaming industry in fact nintendo themselves are the ones who started this whole cartridge versus disc debate in the first place the only reason the sony playstation even exists is because of the disagreement between nintendo and sony over the super nes cd rom system add-on for the super nintendo they got into a disagreement over the rights and licensing of the disks with sony wanting more control over things than nintendo was willing to give up it's clear that nintendo didn't view this as a 50 50 partnership so instead of trying to work things out nintendo went the petty route bailing on sony and going to europe to negotiate a more favorable deal with philips and the rest is history they each went their separate ways so nintendo made the n64 use cartridges while sony made the original playstation used disks oh and the philips cdi ended up being a complete flop yeah don't even get us started on those legend of zelda games nope we are not going down that youtube rabbit hole if we're being honest not going with discs for the n64 was probably one of the rare bad decisions nintendo has made throughout the years because many third-party developers most notably square enix moved to playstation and started making games on sony consoles all because the disk based technology was so much more appealing at the time it gave developers much more freedom and storage to work with which is only a positive nintendo did eventually go the minidiscs route with the gamecube known as game discs but they probably would have stayed with cartridges if it was still a viable option at the time nintendo only chose to go with these mini discs because since they weren't the size of a typical optical disk they were better at preventing copyright infringement and they cost less to produce compared to nintendo 64 cartridges also since they weren't your typical optical disks this meant that nintendo was able to avoid licensing fees to the dvd forum and save even more money only nintendo would figure out a way to make something completely unique that also saves them cheddar so gamecube minidiscs weren't true cds like the ps2 and xbox had then when the wii came out nintendo shocked the world and finally went with regular sized optical discs for the wii and wii u it was very interesting for nintendo to go to disks for a while but as you all know they're now back to teeny tiny game cards for the switch out of sheer necessity it may seem backwards but cartridges have much more advanced technology in them than you'd think and that's why nintendo makes such small cartridges for the nintendo switch are you a fan of these teeny tiny game cards or would you prefer discs do you still buy physical games or have econ completely digital let us know in the comments section down below and please don't forget to subscribe to the gamer for more gaming videos as always thanks a lot for watching

Channel: TheGamer

Views: 332,529

Rating: 4.717145 out of 5

Keywords: Nintendo Switch, Game Cartridges, Game Card, Game Discs, Tiny Cartridges, Why So Small, Advanced Technology, Sony PlayStation, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo GameCube, Wii U, Video Games, Gaming Videos, The Gamer, nintendo

Id: rW5Z5DnaLrA

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020