The Nintendo NX May Go Old-School With Games On Cartridges

Nintendo notoriously took a long time, on its home consoles, to change over to discs from its iconic cartridges. But Nintendo never really left the cartridge behind. The DS and 3DS still use them, storing games on flash memory instead of optical media. And, it appears, Nintendo may be bringing the cart back for its next home console.

The Verge is reporting that the Nintendo NX will be using cartridges instead of optical discs, like the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. This would be in line with the rumors that the NX is more of a portable console you can dock and play on your TV as opposed to a full-on, TV-based home console. And cartridges have some advantages over discs that Nintendo probably likes. They’re cheap to make, especially as the price of flash memory has been driven down by competition; they’re harder to destroy or scratch up, especially in the grubby hands of children; they’re harder to pirate; and, of course, there’s the nostalgia factor.

Such a decision would probably alienate third party developers hoping to put out packaged games on the NX, and considering Nintendo’s record with downloadable games and the internet in general, it’s not clear just how much space the NX would have on-board to download games in the first place. But this remains unconfirmed, for now. We’ll likely learn more about the NX at the Tokyo Game Show, which opens Sept. 15.