wraggster
February 2nd, 2011, 00:28
News via http://gbatemp.net/t277323-3ds-not-immune-to-long-loading-times
Cartridges are considered the superior media format in handhelds. One reason being a longer battery life due to the lack of moving parts in comparison to disk-based media. That part at least still remains true. The other reason in the past has been superior loading times over disk media. However, a closer inspection of some new 3DS games appears to potentially debunk the latter statement. Two games were recently shown off in playable form at a gaming convention, Resident Evil Mercenaries 3D and Ridge Racer 3D. Video evidence points towards possible longer loading times for 3DS games. Ridge Racer 3D shows 12 seconds of loading time for the course, Mercenaries 3D has 15 seconds of loading for the level. It is possible however that these loading times are only present in the demo builds and won't be present in the final game. It is common practice to use early work in progress builds for conventions. It's not always a true indication of what the final version will be like. It remains to be seen whether this will affect the majority of 3DS games. On the other hand, it may just be poor coding in general. There were a few regular DS games that had loading times, of which didn't even use the largest of cartridges (Call of Duty series for instance). Of course, it should also be noted that as flash-based cartridge media increases in size, the transfer rate does indeed gets slower. This may just be a natural result of Nintendo's adoption of larger capacity cartridges.
Cartridges are considered the superior media format in handhelds. One reason being a longer battery life due to the lack of moving parts in comparison to disk-based media. That part at least still remains true. The other reason in the past has been superior loading times over disk media. However, a closer inspection of some new 3DS games appears to potentially debunk the latter statement. Two games were recently shown off in playable form at a gaming convention, Resident Evil Mercenaries 3D and Ridge Racer 3D. Video evidence points towards possible longer loading times for 3DS games. Ridge Racer 3D shows 12 seconds of loading time for the course, Mercenaries 3D has 15 seconds of loading for the level. It is possible however that these loading times are only present in the demo builds and won't be present in the final game. It is common practice to use early work in progress builds for conventions. It's not always a true indication of what the final version will be like. It remains to be seen whether this will affect the majority of 3DS games. On the other hand, it may just be poor coding in general. There were a few regular DS games that had loading times, of which didn't even use the largest of cartridges (Call of Duty series for instance). Of course, it should also be noted that as flash-based cartridge media increases in size, the transfer rate does indeed gets slower. This may just be a natural result of Nintendo's adoption of larger capacity cartridges.