Online gaming publication Kotaku have been told that Nintendo’s next home console won’t come equipt with a traditional Hard-Drive but will instead come with 8 gigabytes of on-board flash-based memory.
Whilst this information is strictly a rumour, sources close to Kotaku have stated that Nintendo have chosen to opt for on-board flash memory rather than include an large HDD like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Sony’s PlayStation.
The console, codenamed Project Café, will include 8 gigabytes of on-board flash-based memory, presumably for game storage. That quantity, while nearly 16 times the storage capacity of the Wii, is smaller than the 20GB of room available in the original, optional hard drives offered in 2005 for the Xbox 360. The amount of memory in the new Nintendo console would also be dwarfed by the 250 GB drives offered in current, high-end versions of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
While my sources have not specified how Nintendo plans to allow owners of its console to use the machine’s memory, 8GB would seem to provide ample room for downloadble retro games, a service Nintendo has already supported on the Wii. The increased capacity, compared to the Wii, would also allow games on the new Nintendo platform to be patched and updated, though downloadable expansions, such as 650 MB Call of Duty map packs would quickly stuff the machine. The system will also support saving to SD cards.
By offering 8GB of storage, Nintendo would not be able to offer full-sized new games for download, a practice that has been promoted on the Xbox 360 and, to a lesser extent, the PlayStation 3, in recent years. It would also be unlikely to store downloaded feature films without additional, user-supplied storage.
– Kotaku
Oh dear. But maybe large storage space won’t be necessary… We’ll see! :)
Yes; Nintendo will use their powers of dark magical arts to make everything take up absolutely no space whatsoever.
Any form of a storage medium will be rendered unnecessary.
That’s sucks if its true. That would be one step forward and two steps back.
In the console market, it is a step behind.
But for Nintendo, it is multiple steps forward. (IIRC, the Wii had about 1/4 of a gigabyte of memory)
That is really, really sad.
Perhaps Nintendo will rely on cloud based storage for save games? That would not be so bad.
Perhaps they’re actually going with holographic data storage? It’s something they’ve looked at before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage (Skip to “In the Video Game Market”)
I know Nintendo doesn’t use every technology they see, but it’s a possibility.
Wait, nevermind. That’s disc memory, not system memory. Ignore this.
I don’t get it, like Gabriel says this is setting back Nintendo 2 steps back, I really hope is a rumor. It needs a HDD.
for now its just a rumor you don’t know….. but i am sure Nintendo are aware that (650 MB Call of Duty map packs would quickly stuff the machine) ….
Once again, Nintendo show the gaming world their a generation back compared to Microsoft and Sony. Damn it.
They’re doing it on purpose. Where can the XBOX 720 and PS4 go after how advanced it has become? Get better graphics? That really doesn’t add anything to how games can be revolutionized. But anyway, I’m sorta glad they did this, because flash memory is a lot faster than spinning hard drives. They could put solid state drives in it, but at the moment, they cost a fortune.
Yeah, okay, it’s faster. Barely.
But flash memory is still degrades faster and 8 GB is basically nothing.
Im actually glad if they decide not to use a Hard Drive (if its true). Hard Drives are too easily corruptible. I had my playstation 3 since October ’10 and had to send it to sony 3 months later cause the HDD got corrupted. I couldn’t play for an entire month! But I had my very same wii since ’07 and i’ve never had any issues. Opt out of a hard drive (in my opinion) would save nintendo a lot of headaches.
THIS SUCKS!! Nintendo, stop being a faggot. Rumors scares me a lot.
Flash memory is a lot faster than hard drives. I don’t want a hard drive in my system, because if the system drops and survives, my data most likely WILL be corrupted because of sudden movement.
My Wii dropped several times from over 5 feet above the ground (not my fault) but it still works. If it had a hard drive, my Wii would have been done for.
Flash memory degrades over time though. You probably won’t ever even get to fill that 8 gigs.
Can you hear yourself? Hard drives corrupt rarely, you comparing capacity to speed different things, the speed advantage is negated if it can only be used to access 8GB of data. Lots of space is a must 60GB minimum HDD’s are dirt cheap nowadays and even SSD’s are follwing.
This is interesting! But why doesnt Nintendo keep their projects hush hush? Other companies/competitions will take this all in mind for their new console.
This is not hopeful news for this new Nintendo console to be a step ahead or at least on par with this gen of gaming consoles.
Better Flash then Hard Drives.. (Faster processing)
Barely.
And it degrades faster than hard drives.
And 8 GB is absolutely pitiful.
I can see the rationale behind this. Hard drives would boost the price significantly and are also slower. Although, I do believe it will be more than 8 gigs. Or perhaps they’ll sell an Nitendo branded accessory that allows more memory. Good business, my friends.
Dude, no. A 100 GB hard drive is about $50.
An 8 GB flash drive can be around $30.
While moving to Flash storage is a good idea, 8gb does not seem like enough. I don’t know how large the system is supposed to be, but it shouldn’t be too expensive to increase the storage to 16gb or more.
What happened to Nintendo planning to stick with physical media? ¬.¬
I hope this is false. I don’t want there to be a cap on how many games I can have. 8 GB is not a lot. If it is true, developers better figure out how to EXTREMELY compress their games.
Not bad.
The biggest problem with flash memory is that it can only be read and rewritten so many times before it’s useless. 8 GB is really a small amount too.
This worries me.
As a certain webcomic would put it:
come ON
I don’t see this as a big problem. Just hope they have more room for game memory, either way.
It’s still possible that it could include a form of large memory. The harddrives could be an optional extra at release or (not very likely) the console could have a completely different form of memory system such as burning the downloaded data to the disk it corresponds with.
Or it could just be a rumour, which is honestly what I think.
Well, if this is true (WHICH I SEVERELY HOPE IT IS NOT!) Project Café better have compatibility with an external Hard Drive of some sort.
hi there not on nintendo call of duty on ds is only 6.5 mb wii 65 mb you only need 100 too 400 free blocks out of 64,000 blocks thats 640 games apps wii u channels see nintendo mass storage have games movies apps with zero block usage 0 blocks is infamt storage for nintendo
hi there skip the hard drive skip flash memory skip isiolinor chip go to live brain interface fast terabytes per second tb/s and trillions of terabytes of storage a direct brain interface gameing is the largest and fastest data transfer
what the?