Switch How worried should we be about this Switch cartridge decay thing?

[Adrastia]

I don't think there's any validity to the article and/or what it says... HOWEVER, doing something like that is something I wouldn't put past the industry. I still remember how they tried to sell those self-decaying DVDs that basically started the process of erasing themselves as soon as the package was opened. The only reason that wasn't a thing was because there was enough pressure from environmental groups about the enormous amount of e-waste those would generate (and even then some were still released).

Was that the DVDs that required a special DVD player and subscription? Some store tried to pull this scam as innovative technology. Circuit City maybe. I saw a Youtube video about it awhile back.

No matter what happens to my physical games I will likely always be able to find them digitally somewhere. Emulation is going to be the best way to preserve games

Also CRT TV's were much more fragile, they literally will just stop working one day.

I had one where the screen kept shrinking vertically. And another that would turn itself on like it was haunted. The screen also developed a red tint. Like it was haunted.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Was that the DVDs that required a special DVD player and subscription? Some store tried to pull this scam as innovative technology. Circuit City maybe. I saw a Youtube video about it awhile back.

No, that was DIVX.

Same idea, much worse.

 

[Matricks]

RTFM its about SWITCH Roms! They are high capacity 10+ GB sized.

 

[Egg (McMuffin) Man]

Saw this article today, wondering how seriously folks are taking it:

PSA: You Could Lose Your Switch Games If You Don't Play Them For Multiple Years

If you've had a Switch game sitting on the shelf for more than five years, you might want to consider booting it up again for a second.

www.thegamer.com

What do we think? Is this a confirmed problem were gonna have to be careful about or just hype?

It's clickbait. They're going to last 30-40+ years. Try searching about the actual chips used, the lab data from the simulations is freely available on the manufacturers website.

 

[Anti-Law Savior]

I don't think something like this is true...but then there is planned obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Haha it's a stretch even for Nintendo to purposely make cartridges so they break and you either buy another or a digital version of the game lmao now I sound like a conspiracy theorists!

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

It’s freaky, definitely. It’ll become part of the culture, whatever culture still plays Switch in the future, whatever culture plays 3DS in the future: use your games.
It’s similar to how it’s customary in the OG Xbox scene to perform surgery on your system to remove leaky capacitors. Or how it’s typical in the GameBoy scene to do screen replacements and mods. People love their games, they love these pieces of hardware, and they’re more than willing to do what they need to do to keep them alive.

I should also say, I’m not surprised the Switch has a problem like this. The Switch was always built more fragile than past Nintendo systems, handheld or otherwise. We knew this back at launch. I was a kid back in 2017, old enough to see the buzz online, and I knew what was customary to do in order to protect your console. What really shocked me was the 3DS carts having the same issue, but it makes enough sense that similar technology would be used between the two, since 3DS software was still very much coming out for the first three years of the Switch’s life.