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Will Sony go with cartridges for PS6?

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Witchilich

Witchilich

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I have been thinking about it for more than an hour at this point. The announcement only mentioned physical discs. The discs would have never worked with PS6 handheld. And Sony wants to compete with Nintendo, especially in the Japanese market. A cartridge makes sense for a physical release that would work in both a home console and a handheld.
 
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OP, you are so delusional.
 
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So they cancel producing all games printed on disc for PS5/PS6 consoles - just to pick up a new venture in producing cartridges again? Makes no sense.
 
The entire point of their concept of next-gen is to enable an all-in-one license that you can take on the go via their new handheld, so the answer is probably no.

Having a cartridge system means they will have to provision for both discs and cartridges in their home console (which is not only expensive when RAM/SSD is already pushing the BOM, it's also impossible on a handheld without making it comically big).

This is them transitioning people by force into digital-only. Maybe you will see codes in boxes or game code cards like Xbox does, but nothing more.
 
Witchilich said:
I have been thinking about it for more than an hour at this point. The announcement only mentioned physical discs. The discs would have never worked with PS6 handheld. And Sony wants to compete with Nintendo, especially in the Japanese market. A cartridge makes sense for a physical release that would work in both a home console and a handheld.
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If you're lucky you'll get a game key card, and they'll be a drill sergeant at the store yelling at you that you'll like it.
 
I would be strangely not surprised if they go to a 'sd card key' route to have a digital key and physical presence at the same time.
 
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They aren't going to invest in making a new type of physical media at this point, when they haven't done it in many years. The Switch 2 ones are just a variation of the cartridges of the Switch, which isn't that an old of a system.
 
Have you seen the NAND prices going up? Why would they go from a cheap storage medium to an expensive AF storage medium?

Switch 2 carts were expensive at launch and even more expensive now. 100gb+ carts would be crazy lol.
 
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Cartridge flash memory isn't fast enough to maintain compatibility with PS5 SSD games.

It would also be hideously expensive if you tried to do it also given the size of the games on Playstation.

SD card technology route is about the only way to do a fake cartridge
* SD reader is dirt cheap, costs next to nothing to build into future console.
* SD card storage is high capacity and not too expensive.
* Games would still have to be installed into the internal SSD of the console.

Physical games on SD-Cart would be premium price for collectors, maybe even directly sold by Sony themselves cutting out retail stores.
 
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It's basically the first notion I had when the portable was first announced and with new ps5 models DDs became detachable , if only N4g was still around so I can laugh all the sony ponies who downvoted me because they didn't want to heed my works mwahaha
 
"Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format. "
 
Hang on so let me get this straight.

Will Sony, at great expense, create, ship and support a physical cartridge, for games that increasingly are over 100gb in size?

Will they include a cartridge reader on their new system? (Which increases the cost of the device)

Will they allow a second hand trade market to exist that they don't realize any revenue from?

All of that when they could instead just.. sell the game digitally over the internet?

What do you think. Really ponder this one.
 
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Probably not. Would introduce more headaches for them. Zero benefit for the company. They'll prefer to deal with the whining on the internet for a couple months. Also, they have no real competition within their niche of the gaming space (AAA console gaming).
 
The only reason why Nintendo is doing it is to make it seem like they're still supporting physical releases and to avoid bigger drama among their fanbase from abandoning retail format. Switch 3 will also be all-digital.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony will still keep selling games in retail stores, but you'll just find a redeem code inside. It's already happening to remaining PC games that get a box release.
 
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Witchilich said:
I have been thinking about it for more than an hour at this point. The announcement only mentioned physical discs. The discs would have never worked with PS6 handheld. And Sony wants to compete with Nintendo, especially in the Japanese market. A cartridge makes sense for a physical release that would work in both a home console and a handheld.
Click to expand...
LOL...no. Are you not paying ANY attention to the world around you? With nand prices being what they are explain how this make even a little bit of sense.

C'mon man...
 
Microsoft went 3rd party on playstation this gen. It makes sense to support cartridges to make the Nintendo transition easier next gen.
 
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