REPORT: Nintendo NX to use cartridges

A report by The Wall Street Journal claims that Nintendo’s upcoming home console, codenamed the NX, will use cartridges for its games rather than digital.

The first console I ever owned was my cute little NES Top Loader. It still sits proudly next to all my other consoles, and it will always be my favorite purely for nostalgic reasons. My favorite NES games growing up were Super Mario Bros. 1 & 3, Arch Rivals, and Battletoads. I missed out on a lot of NES classics like The Legend of Zelda and Contra; I was limited to the games my cousin gave to me alongside the console.

Regardless, I loved the time I spent with my NES, and I was so happy when I got the Nintendo 64 when I was about eight years old. Nintendo opened up this whole new world for me; I fell in love with video games almost immediately and can’t imagine my life without them today. I certainly wouldn’t be here writing this.

The reason I’m writing about Nintendo is because I read some interesting news about the company's upcoming console, codenamed the NX. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the NX will use cartridges in place of discs. Nintendo has been using discs on their home consoles since the GameCube was released 15 years ago.

Upon first hearing this news, I thought that maybe this was just another desperate gimmick and that Nintendo was relying way too much on the power of nostalgia to sell their console and games. If this news is true, I’m sure nostalgia was one factor Nintendo considered when deciding to use cartridges for their next console, but there’s more to it than that; as Takashi Mochizuki at the WSJ points out, using cartridges would mean increased capacity and speed of flash memory, as well as cheaper mass production; and, cartridges would make pirating games more difficult. If Nintendo is in fact using cartridges, will all third-party games only be available digitally? I’m very curious to know more about this.

Personally, I think cartridges are a great idea; they’re more durable, have virtually no loading times, and are more fun to collect. I have plenty of discs lying around the house, ranging from pint-sized GameCube discs to Blu-Rays, and, honestly, their cases take up a lot of space on shelves and aren’t aesthetically pleasing to me. My NES, SNES, and N64 cartridges, however, are so fun to look at and hold; they’re all different colors, especially the N64 ones. I just love cartridges, and I really hope this news is confirmed by Nintendo.

Nintendo never has and never will offer what Sony and Microsoft do, and that’s okay. We are mostly a PlayStation household, but when we have friends over, which consoles do we gravitate towards?

It’s always the N64, GameCube, or Wii U. As you all know by now, I’m a single-player campaign kinda gal, but who doesn’t enjoy a round of Mario Party with friends? Even though the Wii U will be seen as a commercial failure, I love ours and have certainly had my fun with it. I do hope the NX is marketed better than the Wii U was; I’d love to see Nintendo thrive again in the home console space.

I think cartridges could be a game changer in 2017.

What are your thoughts on the NX? Do you think cartridges are a good or bad idea? Talk to me on Twitter: @gottosaurus.