Who remembers game cartridges? If you are like me, you remember when the games didn’t work all you had to do was blow in them to get them to work again, especially those Nintendo cartridges. Those were the days when you bought the full game and got them on the cartridge. Well, guess we have to start practicing – but it probably comes as second nature for most of us gamer. Nintendo NX cartridges could be on their way.
This rumor comes from recent financial statements of Chinese memory manufacturer Macronix. The company is expecting an increased order of its ROM chips from Nintendo. As reported by Money-Link (translated by NeoGAF userJim_Cacher), the company chairmen Wu Miin even made references to the Nintendo NX during his briefing.
“In the past, Macronix sales performance usually peaked at third quarter, while declined at the fourth quarter. However, Wu Miin pointed out that because Nintendo has announced that the new platform will be launched in March next year, orders should be placed in advance. Therefore, the operating revenue of Macronix in the fourth quarter may be as good as the third quarter.”
However, nothing confirms the rumor that cartridges will be used and it is all speculation, but here are some reasons that they might be used. The high-speed nature of cartridges could get rid of the need for PS4-style game installations and, if the rumours of the NX being a handheld/home console hybrid are true, the lack of an optical disc drive would make the console far more portable. Cartridges are faster in gathering and processing data than discs are, and this would mean that the installations the PS4 and Xbox One require would be unnecessary.
Screen Critics also reported that Macronix has begun testing 32 GB chips. By comparison, both the PS4 and Xbox One use 50GB Blu-Rays, and most games even exceed that limitation, forcing additional information to be downloaded. It’s still unclear if Nintendo will adopt a new format for modern games that would still need to install additional features and reduce the need for installs.
Nintendo has announced that the NX will launch worldwide in March 2017, although we won’t see it at this year’s E3.
Source: IGN
