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.

 

[iamthemilkman]

Got around to testing all of my 3DS games and Code Name S.T.E.A.M. gets an error every single time. I Googled it and this seems incredibly common with this game. While it's still cheap, and I did enjoy the game, I don't think I'll bother rebuying it since it's a common issue.

 

[Mr. SyS]

Roms don't decay if you keep backing them up over and over. Just saying.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

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!

Which sucks since ecology is an important thing.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

It’s something to be aware of, yes, but not something to utterly destroy your desire to collect if you truly love to.

If you’re buying from any kind of seller, PLEASE ask them to show you it working in their system. This goes for brick and mortar stores too: ask for testing. They already should anyway, but I’ve had a few situations over the years where I got scammed at a brick and mortar (I’ll never forget when I bought a Sonic Advance 3 cartridge that had LITERAL DIRT INSIDE from a store that was all about keeping up appearances).


If you were already going to emulate or only play digital games through modding your system, this doesn’t affect you and you can move along. There are other things to worry about with that (like circle pad decay on real hardware. Just about all my friends have busted circle pads lmao)

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I'd also add that nothing last forever and even NES games could start getting issues.

Objectively no company made cartridges nor CDs with centuries in mind.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

I'd also add that nothing last forever and even NES games could start getting issues.

Objectively no company made cartridges nor CDs with centuries in mind.

This. But, also, this decay is remarkably faster than is typical. Most game carts still work as long as they’ve been cared for and kept in a cool, moisture free climate. It’s definitely okay for people to be concerned about this particular issue, since it’s so soon in the system’s existence.

 

[trickybus]

Are the Switch carts still tasty? Because in that case, you need to be worried about me eating them

 

[PhaseJump]

The memory used in Nintendo game cards, new Atari carts, the Evercade games, etc. are all flash. They are all more fragile and can have bits flipped, causing corruption and catastrophic failure if there is no electricity to charge it.

These games will go "shelf dead" if left sitting in the box for a few decades even if properly stored. Sooner than the old rom cartridges, probably sooner than discs which rust and rot depending on how they are stored, and how they were pressed.

Bits get flipped and data gets corrupted by stray cosmic rays all the time. It's why enterprise environments use error correction memory, and always back things up to redundant drives or tape archives.

All the conspiracy and doubt around this issue being commented on here is a bit funny. It's absolutely true. It is another reason I can't take the new Switch 2 users that cry and go to war about game key cards too seriously. They already lost the "physical preservation" argument a few generations ago and apparently they didn't even notice yet.

 

[Esidemoken]

@PhaseJump Exactly, the same applies to OLEDs and burn-in; it's not a question of if it will happen, but when.

 

[Lena CE]

It feels like worrying about disk rot in the sense that it is likely something that can/should cause concern but so long as things are maintained won't be an issue, at least not for a very long time.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 4:41 AM

These games will go "shelf dead" if left sitting in the box for a few decades even if properly stored.

It's hard to take the doom and gloom seriously if the example is "the game goes unused for literal decades". Granted in 10-20+ years we very well might see some sort of collapse in the secondhand market for these systems as meaningful percentages of the cartridges start to go bad. It's something that's kinda hard to feel super worried for though given everyone who seems to understand the issue better than me describes a reality where something needs to go without even minimal testing for 20-30+ years.

@PhaseJump Exactly, the same applies to OLEDs and burn-in; it's not a question of if it will happen, but when.

If the argument is "not if, but when" then that applies to quite literally every piece of technology you own and is a functionally useless statement imo. Everything will need maintenance eventually, my fat PS3 is damn near a ship of theseus with how much of it has been replaced/upgraded at this point. My CRT will eventually need parts replaced or will stop working outright. If it is mechanical, then on some level it is finite. Maybe you can hypothetically keep repairing/replacing bits of the thing until you die, but eventually it won't even exist to be usable by the next generation.

Which yes, we should all be aware of that and work to preserve what we can as best as we can. Software is more easily preserved but even then, in 50 years what will the world look like if people continue trying to endlessly throw more and more data onto servers in the hopes that it will be available eternally to anyone who goes looking. That's getting into other issues and hypotheticals tho. Point is that just because something is finite doesn't mean it loses all semblance of value.

As an admittedly vapid and purely anecdotal example, my Vita does in fact have some burn-in when the screen goes pitch black, but after ungodly amounts of hours across tons of software on an early generation OLED it is still truckin along well. Of course, I have a backup unit and wanna get a 2000 just in case, but with how much I love OLED's I wouldn't let the fact that they'll go bad in some nebulous future-time deter me from enjoying it in the present anymore than I will let the fact that my CRT will go bad someday deter me from enjoying playing my classic consoles on it.

Fwiw, fact that people have run tests that are far harsher on modern OLED panels than anything they will actually see in the real world and the hardware has come out just fine shows me that on some level, people who swear off OLEDs due to fear of obsolesce are being at least a bit alarmist at this point.

 

[Esidemoken]

If the argument is "not if, but when" then that applies to quite literally every piece of technology you own and is a functionally useless statement imo. Everything will need maintenance eventually, my fat PS3 is damn near a ship of theseus with how much of it has been replaced/upgraded at this point. My CRT will eventually need parts replaced or will stop working outright. If it is mechanical, then on some level it is finite. Maybe you can hypothetically keep repairing/replacing bits of the thing until you die, but eventually it won't even exist to be usable by the next generation.

Which yes, we should all be aware of that and work to preserve what we can as best as we can. Software is more easily preserved but even then, in 50 years what will the world look like if people continue trying to endlessly throw more and more data onto servers in the hopes that it will be available eternally to anyone who goes looking. That's getting into other issues and hypotheticals tho. Point is that just because something is finite doesn't mean it loses all semblance of value.

As an admittedly vapid and purely anecdotal example, my Vita does in fact have some burn-in when the screen goes pitch black, but after ungodly amounts of hours across tons of software on an early generation OLED it is still truckin along well. Of course, I have a backup unit and wanna get a 2000 just in case, but with how much I love OLED's I wouldn't let the fact that they'll go bad in some nebulous future-time deter me from enjoying it in the present anymore than I will let the fact that my CRT will go bad someday deter me from enjoying playing my classic consoles on it.

Fwiw, fact that people have run tests that are far harsher on modern OLED panels than anything they will actually see in the real world and the hardware has come out just fine shows me that on some level, people who swear off OLEDs due to fear of obsolesce are being at least a bit alarmist at this point.

The thing is, we know how long old games last because they still work today, but we're still seeing how long those that use flash technology will last. We know that flash memory can self-erase because we've all had USB or SD memory sticks that die for no apparent reason.

While consoles, PVMs, and many other devices can be maintained to extend their useful life, this is not possible with OLEDs. The tools that manufacturers provide are only meant to delay the pixel degradation that will inevitably occur. It is not a problem that they have eliminated because the organic LED technology itself does not allow it.

If, in order to avoid burn-in, you have to babysit your TV and limit your use of the screen... it's normal that many people don't think the image quality is worth it, especially with the latent risk of burn-in.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Bits get flipped and data gets corrupted by stray cosmic rays all the time.

I thought the whole cosmic ray thing was debunked (or at least regarding Mario 64's famous glitch).

All the conspiracy and doubt around this issue being commented on here is a bit funny. It's absolutely true. It is another reason I can't take the new Switch 2 users that cry and go to war about game key cards too seriously. They already lost the "physical preservation" argument a few generations ago and apparently they didn't even notice yet.

Technically physical preservation got harder since the 7th gen thanks to DLC and digital/online only games. Unless you dump the data in several storages.

Still, I still think game key cards are band-aids on a wooden leg.

 

[PhaseJump]

It feels like worrying about disk rot in the sense that it is likely something that can/should cause concern but so long as things are maintained won't be an issue, at least not for a very long time.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 4:41 AM

It's hard to take the doom and gloom seriously if the example is "the game goes unused for literal decades". Granted in 10-20+ years we very well might see some sort of collapse in the secondhand market for these systems as meaningful percentages of the cartridges start to go bad. It's something that's kinda hard to feel super worried for though given everyone who seems to understand the issue better than me describes a reality where something needs to go without even minimal testing for 20-30+ years.

Minimal testing isn't a guarantee. People hoard their junk and stick them in a garage or attic for years or decades at a time. Half of the market is being sold as valuable nostalgia bait.

People are out there pushing 40 or 50, hoarding flash based carts as some last chance to buy physical stuff. Many whine about digital libraries that won't be transferable, crying about missing the physical artifact experience they had as kids. They put money into having shelves of what amounts to plastic junk. Evercade and the new Atari is built off of this angle of things.

Millennials want to preserve a library, justify the money they put into it, and cling on to the idea of their kids or grand kids going into an attic or garage and pulling out a toy box time capsule 30+ years later.

If the argument is "not if, but when" then that applies to quite literally every piece of technology you own and is a functionally useless statement imo. Everything will need maintenance eventually, my fat PS3 is damn near a ship of theseus with how much of it has been replaced/upgraded at this point. My CRT will eventually need parts replaced or will stop working outright. If it is mechanical, then on some level it is finite. Maybe you can hypothetically keep repairing/replacing bits of the thing until you die, but eventually it won't even exist to be usable by the next generation.

Yeah, you're right, but the entire point is that many game collectors are in denial of it happening to media and not just hardware. Many of them demonize digital libraries because they can be taken away from them, dumping money into repairing old hardware, buying fpga and emulation clones to play old media.

They shit all over the internet about physical collecting being a better answer, yet the only physical option in front of them is cheap volatile memory that is much more easy to corrupt or go shelf dead, compared to old roms and discs.


As I said before, the whole thing is funny. The physical preservation of software is being championed by people who don't understand how disposable their toys have become.

I thought the whole cosmic ray thing was debunked (or at least regarding Mario 64's famous glitch).

Cosmic rays, static discharge, power failure on read & write cycles can flip bits and destroy data integrity in magnetic storage devices or active memory. Corruption happens. Data centers that support big enterprise, protecting bank infrastructure, etc. They have 0 tolerance for data loss or corruption. Everything put in and out of active memory when accessed typically has error correction happening, always making sure checksums add up, fetching data again if things fail.

Typical home computers and devices don't go the extra mile to protect data integrity, not without extra cost and setup.

Technically physical preservation got harder since the 7th gen thanks to DLC and digital/online only games. Unless you dump the data in several storages.

Still, I still think game key cards are band-aids on a wooden leg.

The internet is better at preserving things.

The problem or argument to be made around it is guaranteed access in the future, without the big companies being able to stop you and force you to upgrade. The lack of public domain or consumer rights over software purchases.

 

[Lena CE]

If, in order to avoid burn-in, you have to babysit your TV and limit your use of the screen... it's normal that many people don't think the image quality is worth it, especially with the latent risk of burn-in.

Why are we equating "not leaving the same mostly static image on your monitor for hours upon hours at a time" as babysitting. "You have to be actively playing/watching something for at least most of the time the device is on" is less babysitting and more just using the thing you spent money on in some remotely normal fashion lol

Regardless of being able to repair old electronics, they are not permanent. Nothing truly is. There are plenty who reach a point where even repair can't fully correct the issue or no matter what you do to try and get something to work, it fails.

The notion that something physical only has worth if it is in some sense permanent is just silly to me even if its only implied. Dont get me wrong, things should absolutely last and the forced obsolescence in many aspects of modern design is frustrating, but ultimately you have the be the judge on what is or isn't worth it.

Its hard to set a rubric, but if I buy a brand new thing I probably hope to get like $30-40 of value out of it per year. This is to say that i I buy an OLED monitor/TV for $300 then I'd hope to get about 10 years out of it. Both my OLED TV and my Vita have lasted about 10 years (I got the Vita in 2015 used) and neither have had substantial issues despite being early versions of that technology that are supposedly very prone to wear. I am also a very heavy user, I play a lot of games, I'm inside playing/watching stuff almost constantly. These things are getting heavier usage with absolutely 0 extra precaution taken (I use these the same as any other TV/monitor/handheld I have ever owned), and yet I have experienced no issues aside from some burn-in on the Vita only noticeable when the screen goes black. They are not apparent in gameplay at all, I have no issues with dead pixels or the like.

Maybe that's luck, I don't know. I remember my PS4 breaking down after just a few years while my friend is still using her launch model that she has spent tens of thousands of hours using without fuss (and she doesn't do any maintenance or cleaning). Ironically, my LED TV that I used in a seperate room (and was my primary display until getting the OLED) developed a few dead pixels by about year 4 of use, no clue why.

But for the $150 I spent on the Vita, is minimum 10 years of operation not a worthwhile investment for a screen I enjoy so much? I have 8 years of use on the OLED TV so far and I spent about $350 on it. If it broke tomorrow it would have been about a $40 per year investment which really isn't that bad imo, especially if I prefer the experience over other potentially more "reliable" HD displays I could have gotten at the time in the same price range.

I just don't really see your point, basically. You talk about babysitting the monitor and invoke forced obsolescence, but idk I genuinely do not think it is a rational reason to discount the technology. If you don't like it then fine but I'd rather someone not prefer it for reasons thag feel more reasonable aside from "hypothetically this could last a bit longer" or "If you use this in a way that is detached from reason then it might have issues in the near future"

Millennials want to preserve a library, justify the money they put into it, and cling on to the idea of their kids or grand kids going into an attic or garage and pulling out a toy box time capsule 30+ years later.

As I said before, the whole thing is funny. The physical preservation of software is being championed by people who don't understand how disposable their toys have become.

The internet is better at preserving things.

I agree to the extent that modern physical releases are more or less pointless and it is definitely funny when seeing someone unaware that the game they just bought doesn't even have the game on the disk/cart, but I do think its silly to discount the act of ownership in its entirety.

Because really a lot of your rhetoric can be aimed at digital ownership too imo.

One reason real physical releases matrer to people is that the physicality of objects is just inherently joyful to engage with but also that at least the ownership of it is more in my hands. I can store my own backups, I can choose how I store the physical object itself. I don't have to worry about a romsite staying online or some link/file in a discord server to stay available. It is mine, if the disk fails I hypothetically played some part in that. If I failed to back it up and hypothetically failed to find another copy online somehow (physical or digital) at least that's my fault.

Irrational? To an extent absolutely, but so is the blind notion that someone's console manufacturer will stay in business forever to validate every purchase they've made with official versions of said downloads. Even the notion that Steam will maintain a lovely place to spend your money forever and ever. Sure some purists do swear by only purchasing non-DRM copies of PC games from places like GOG, but that type of person is exceedingly rare.

At least if I die, physical games can be transferred to someone to continue using or even just sold to pay some bills. There is some level of continued value in ways that digital goods can't meaningfully promise. If I'm hit by a car tomorrow my digital libraries across console and PC are useless forever. They can't be transferred to anyone even if I put it in my will or something.

So the only real avenue for some level of permanence is piracy, which is of course why archival and such is so important! That goes without saying, especially in places like this.

Rambling aside, I like physical because owning the box is fun. Collecting things is a very normal and human thing to do on some level and the physicality of sharing games with others and having something to hold in my hands or show to people is just inherently engaging. I'm not against digital and in the case of stuff like Switch 2 game cards or PS5 games that are launching with only part of the game on the disc I'd rather not bother and just get it digital at that point for the convenience it offers.

Maybe you're right and I am foolish whenever I buy the occasional Switch game because surely it will not last for the next 20 years or so. All I can say is that while it would suck, its also not necessarily my goal. If I buy a game for $60-70 and I get 20+ years out of it I'm pretty happy about that. Its not the point but I do think its worth noting that most people will buy a thing only to use it once. Beat this game and never touch it again, watch this movie and then it sits on a shelf or on a hard drive etc etc.

Its the same to me as blindly assuming that digital is sacred due to the internet being conceptually permanent or infinite. Eventually there will just be too much stuff to reasonably store in even the theoretical infinite of the internet. People hoard hard drives, backups of backups of everything they have ever owned or downloaded in the hopes that it is a sort of permanent solution, but to an extent its all kind of pointless as far as making things last forever. We cant just endlessly build data centers, hoard hard drives and continue expanding the levels of waste produced by the entire process. Eventually the dam has to break.

And I think the goal of making things last forever is a noble one, absolutely! I struggle with accepting that anything is waste and if I ever had to make the choice between preserving one thing or another (in some hypothetical of course) I'd probably wrestle with that guilt forever. It just feels like some people take on this mentality of, "if it doesn't last forever its pointless."

Here's a video that I feel touches on this subject with way more care and nuance than I ever could. I've thought about it frequently since I first saw it a couple months ago. Its less about logistics and more about the philosophy of it all.

 

[Esidemoken]

@Lena CE
To each his own. If taking care of a TV means I can't use it as I please, then that's a limitation.

If I want to, I can watch the same content for hours (more than 10) and for days on end. If doing this on an OLED means increasing the risk of burn-in, then it's not the technology for me, and from my perspective, it's bad technology...again for me. If in exchange for a spectacular image (which it mostly is, and I haven't denied that) I have to babysit...I'll pass.

You don't have to understand my perspective, just respect it as I do yours, It's not like I expect everyone to have the same opinion as me.

 

[MajesticSiN]

It wouldn't surprise me if that was true. I mean I knew a couple 3DS games that just don't work anymore so who knows.

 

[Lena CE]

@Lena CE
To each his own. If taking care of a TV means I can't use it as I please, then that's a limitation.

If I want to, I can watch the same content for hours (more than 10) and for days on end. If doing this on an OLED means increasing the risk of burn-in, then it's not the technology for me, and from my perspective, it's bad technology...again for me. If in exchange for a spectacular image (which it mostly is, and I haven't denied that) I have to babysit...I'll pass.

You don't have to understand my perspective, just respect it as I do yours, It's not like I expect everyone to have the same opinion as me.

What show are you watching for 10 plus hours that is an almost entirely static image with absolutely no visual changes whatsoever? Do you mean that you're putting on something like a 10-hour loop of a song and just leaving the jpg attached to the loop fullscreened on the monitor for the entirety of the listening session? If so, then yea maybe OLED burn-in would appear in just a couple years of use. But if you're just talking about playing a game or watching a couple seasons of anime for 10+ hours you have nothing to worry about.

I probably play like 30+ hours of games a week on it and that's without factoring in internet browsing and movie/show binges. This "can't use it as I please" is a limitation in your head, it isn't real. I made sure to explicitly say that I use my OLED without any limitations. I do not babysit it; I do not pay attention to what I do or don't watch/play on it. I treat it the same as every other monitor I have ever had and ever will have. There has been NOTHING about my consumption habits that has changed over nearly a decade and easily 15k-20k+ hours of use. Hell, the number of times I've come home to my PC just being stuck on the login screen cause my cat walks over my keyboard while I'm gone is innumerable. I've gone on whole vacations without forgetting to turn it off. Hard to calculate the number of days that my monitor has accidentally been left on the same static image of Serial Experiments Lain but it has got to be at least 2-3 weeks' worth of just this one image being displayed without any motion or change whatsoever.

I played roughly 60 hours of Ninja Gaiden 4 on this thing over the past week that the game has been out. That's averaging almost 10 hours a day for just this game and again I've also watched a couple movies, an unknown amount of Youtube and then regular internet browsing.

And I wanna clarify that I'm not mad or trying to insult you or your preferences, I just really wanna drive home that it isn't nearly as unreliable as some folks seem to believe. I remember when the Switch OLED was announced there were a couple people on twitter fearmongering about OLED burn-in and it really ignited paranoia in a lot of people, though of course people have been skeptical of the tech for quite some time in less of a mainstream sense.

 

[Adrastia]

Roms don't decay if you keep backing them up over and over. Just saying.

Also, look at this game. It's been like 300 years and it still works. Until Tom Petty knocks it over. But if you have to use your hands then that's like a baby's toy!

But really, I think it's fear mongering/click bait. I have games I haven't played in ages that I could try later. But I don't think that they are goners just because of that.

 

[Esidemoken]

@Lena CE
Even assuming I believed what you say, for every positive experience I find a negative one, people who have had theirs for more than three years and nothing has happened, and others who have had their screens burn in after just one year.

For you, the risk is worth it, but not for me. Even if the risk were 20%, it wouldn't be worth it for me.
You mentioned that you play 30+ hours a week. What if I told you that I can reach 50+ hours with the same game with static elements?

As I said before, for every person who says they've gone years without burn-in, there's another who has it in a matter of months, even using a new screen.
The “paranoia” you mentioned has grounds to exist. Just as we cannot say that burn-in will occur within a week, we also cannot say that it will never occur. It's no surprise that OLED burn-in is not covered by most warranties.