Big Switch Cartridges VS Small Carts! Is There A Difference? | Tech Wave
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- An article was posted on GoNintendo pointing out the differences between larger and smaller carts having different colors on the back where the board is located. Today we'll open the two different types and see what's inside while trying to also put them back together.
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Игры
The gray/black chips are made using a mask process that allows them to be pumped out in larger number at a lower cost by volume (larger up-front cost), hence why they are only used for games expected to sell a lot of copies. Versus the green type that have to be written individually which is cheaper for smaller volume production (indie titles and such.)
D00mM4r1n3 the problem is that most big gaming companies releasing games expected to sell a lot still use the smaller carts, because they seem to love cutting costs at the expense of the players.
This makes perfect sense when you consider manufacturing logistics. You're only going to recoup the setup fees if you sell a lot of them -- at which point the per-unit cost starts to reap savings over the lower initial cost of stock parts.
So Splatoon 2, Kirby Star Allies, Mario Rabbids, Arms, etc were expected to not sell well
but
Rime, Nights of Azura and XONIC were expected to do well?
...
No
A mask rom need not be confined to a monolithic die. Mask roms were certainly very common back in the days of cartridge games, and there was definitely a lot of board to go with the chip(s).
I would probably say that the chip on the board is manufactured using an older fabrication process, and could be cheaper than the monolithic chip.
That explains why my smash bros card is green.
But my payday 2 one is black
Only a true tech head would attempt this and go "eh, we'll put it back together good as new no problem... with glue".
Hanzo Hattori Its not like he has a vibration welder just sitting around, already tooled up to weld these carridges back together.
Robert NES816
use s vibrator to put back together games?
plastic like this is usually sonic-welded together
Paul Brookfield well crap, now I have to look up what sonic-welding is
Nintendo use glue to stick them together in the first place so why not?
What about the 32gb carts? Dragon Quest Heroes from Japan uses it. Can you open that up too?
Rez Jaz will they be localized too
Rez Jaz how big is Zeldas kart
@@JacobHoggan if you're talking about zelda breath of the wild then it would be on a 16gb cart... but if you're talking about zelda link's awakening remake then that would be on a 8gb cart :)
But, Mr. Wave, do they TASTE different?!?
he is not eating laundry pods stop asking
This needs answering...
justin rivera if I remember correctly Nintendo puts a bitterant on their cartridges so little kids and animals don't eat or swallow them
I can’t be the only one who licks every new game I get to see if it still tastes the same
I would always do that with my ds games
Cool to see what's in them! :D
JesseAndMike Wow, these guys have 3.5 million subs... kinda shocked me to see that on this little channel. 🤪
wow
GamingKing Very wow!
Why are you here?
@@theforgottenones1542 Probably in part because they make dumb comments like this on thousands of vids
The reason is not to save costs but the 16, 32 & 64GB NAND chips are otherwise too thick to fit into the case of the card with a PCB.
The cards with less than 16GB use standard Flash chips which are also thinner than the 16GB and more NAND chips.
That seems to be the opposite of what the video shows. The smaller game had the PCB, but the larger game, with more storage, has no PCB. It fits fine.
What he's saying is that the larger game, with the larger (thicker) chip, wouldn't fit if there was ALSO a PCB in there. Thick chip = no room for PCB, so they figured out how to make it work without one.
I think where we mainly disagree is on their motivations. Where its zoomed in at 3:19, the two chips (the chips themselves, ignoring the PCB) are about the same thickness. The motivation wasn't because the MXIC chip wouldn't fit with a PCB, it would. The motivation was, when the switch was a demonstrated success, it made sense to go the extra mile and make custom chips that have no need for the PCB, further cutting cost long term.
I enjoyed seeing my photo in this video. I was the originator of the Reddit post that GoNintendo picked up and you made the video about. Pretty fun seeing the story develop.
Jon Erdahl dude no one cares.
I care
I care
I care
Mando Fresco You just got pwned
Opened up an old and dead Memory Stick Duo Pro HG, the fastest Memory Stick cards Sony did, and it used the exact same construction of the Resident Evil cartridge on the Switch. Yes it's likely a LOT cheaper, you basically avoid making a board, assembling a board and all that, instead you just make the cheaper wire bonds inside the plastic/epoxy package of the chip itself and call it a day, instead of balls underneath like on BGA chips you make tabs. Gotta say it's an amazing idea to reduce costs.
when i hear the the words "half the cart is empty" i think of the nes and how there the same as the famicom but the carts are twice as big
Some games did take up more space on the NES though, specifically battery back carts.
That reminds me of GB cartridges too. Those without a battery for saves were half empty.
charvelgtrs where any games so big the famicom version had to have a bigger outer plastic shell
justin rivera I opened a Nes cartridge back in the day and it was about 4/5th empty space with the very large rom at the bottom .
justin rivera No, They used the Disk System.
The Switch cartridges are using MASK ROM technology, not Flash. Because of this the larger games actually have a physically larger chip (IC Die). And the chip is what is INSIDE the black resin block you found, what I call "chip" is in fact known in the industry as "IC" or "die". These ICs are encapsulated in resin blocks and it is impossible to take them apart without destroying the encapsulation (The resin has to be dissolved in acid).
Still my favorite "guilty pleasure" content from your channel. I know you aren't a tech channel, but I love this stuff.
Oh, and the music is right amount of chill.
That backing is called the solder mask, it prevents foreign objects from shorting out traces and damaging the device
I love these videos, I always find the inner workings of electronics super interesting, so these are especially great to me :)
You're a brave soul, for opening these and hoping you could get them back together. Thanks for continuing to be a guy who asks questions and follows his curiosity.
To be fair, he didn't do it with his more valuable and cherished games.
He makes more money with this video than the games are worth. Obviously.
+MarkXV I highly doubt that. RUclips's policies have gotten worse and worse for small-time youtubers.
I believe they seal games in these lone chips to make it more difficult to rip data from them. No exposed memory chip = harder to read data from them directly. You'd have to destroy the chip entirely to get access to the memory cell inside.
meh fiberglass pen and some skills and you could definately find some points to solder on. ever seen sd card data recovery??
This is really interesting I always wondered why there was black and green switch chips.
I can’t blame them for putting the contacts directly on the chip, all the POV does is fill the space and provide a pathway to the chip. It’s surprising that that didn’t do this sooner considering some thumb drives are made the same way
Instead of rocking the blade, try twisting. The force might break stuff where it connects though, depends on what you’re trying this on. Figured maybe you could use this tip in the future
I appreciate your time you took to solve the chip mystery in relation to the size of a Nintendo Switch game. Very interesting to know that the manufacturing process is completely different on both games. Just goes to show that they might look the same on the outside, but they're too different chips that theoretically do exactly the same thing!
Very neat, is kind of rare for a manufacturer to go with a custom packaging for a chip.
This was so cool. Thanks for risking a couple games to show us this! :)
3:46 face reveal?
James Nue You must be new.
He's shown his face on videos for a while now, even in the thumbnails.
KesorodaBlk
its a joke.........
Kevin (Poe's Law)
KesorodaBlk joke
You
wow didnt notice that thx dude hope he does a face reveal soon
I honestly thought that this would be a video about the 64 GB carts that Nintendo is supposed to release for the Switch, but I'm still glad that I found this out. I don't own a Switch yet, so seeing this was great
Now this also means that a chip that's physically twice the size (or two frankenstined together) could fit into that plastic case. Good news
Someone will probably develop a game where you can turn the cartride around for either the second part or a different game.
Or maybe someone will make a holder for people to put their two black games into so you can carry more games with you.
jort93z @nintendo, hire this man
OldGamerNoob Did you trust try to @ Nintendo?
not much point. if it's the same size as an existing cartridge you might as well just use a menu in software to select between multiple games.
If it's a single large game, just wire the chips up correctly and it won't require people to do weird things halfway through.
If you need extra space in the cartridge for whatever reason, make a bigger cartridge that protrudes out of the slot.
Aside from problems with storing the system and the cartridge slot cover, there's no reason why you couldn't make a cartridge that is physically larger than the norm.
All you need to get right is the electrical connection.
I even imagine some of the earliest attempts at homebrew for the switch (that doesn't involve abusing the internal storage) would use a connector plugged into the cartridge slot with a ribbon cable that plugs into something much larger that contains the actual flash memory or whatever the homebrew game relies on...
Or just buy games online?
After looking at my cartridges I found something interesting... Crash N-Sane Trilogy takes only 5.3GB but has a black chip cart, but FF12 takes 12GB and uses a PCB. I think it is more what can they get at the time, rather than what is cheaper for a given file size.
Here follows technobabble: the green cart is a standard PCB assembly using a TSSOP-48 chip, while the black one used a packaging technique called custom LGA. LGA chip-only packages are cheaper to manufacture en masse, but since this is a custom design it requires significant tooling costs to make the oddly shaped lead frame involved. On the other hand that TSSOP-48 chip is a standard chip package design used by a lot of different chips, hence a lot cheaper to make since there is next to no tooling cost. As of capacity you will have to read the markings on the chip itself - whatever follows “MX23” - to determine.
Genuinely surprised. I was just expecting a grey board!
This was actually pretty interesting. I thought that the larger game would look more tecky than the smaller one on the inside. I liked this outdo music btw.
All the way I was saying: "They just maid it a different color, probably a different manufacturer". I definitely was not expecting that :| Nice video ;)
Any price savings by not using a standard mass produced board will always be greatly counteracted by the cost of making a whole new production line for a product that only you are using.
By omitting the thick, but cheap board the more important benefit is you can use a thicker chipset and storage that uses the space that was under the chip in the small game.
Use a heat gun or blow dryer to reactivate the adhesive so that it will be easier to take apart.
Hey! That BIG Cartridge looks exactly like what the insides of a PSVITA cart
ive also seen it in a couple USB Drives!
Def my favorite type of videos on this channel! I’d love to see more tech wave ones in the future @spawnwavemedia
3:02 Thank you. I was curious and watched your video about the 32GB version first and did not understand why you apparently ripped the chip off the PCB. Turns out there is no PCB and the backside looks like a micro SD with the contacts on them. Not very surprising, but but the size of the plastic case made me believe that there always has to be a PCB like with the green ones.
very cool, i had no idea that they looked like this inside, or that there were different types!
who knows they might add more stuff to the cart like how they added extra hardware in the old carts
I remember they did something similar with the ds. First example I noticed was Pokémon platinum was the normal grey cartridge and Pokémon hgss got a black cartridge. File size was different which I noticed when I started playing with nds roms
A channel that opens things up and tinkers with them? Subscribed ♡
Stops me from damaging things I can't afford to break 😂
Both carts are essentially the same: a ROM on a PCB. The RE, is a TSOP-48 on PCB with green solder mask. The other is a BGA (23 series ROM) on a PCB. Depending on the MFG, they will supply Nintendo with different chip packages. The cost between the two are trivial. Also you mentioned cost, well a Mask ROM (the type being used here) is vastly cheaper than the current alternative (MLC NAND). So my guess each cart costs $3 at most.
I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturers will eventually make board which houses a micro SD to cut costs, because it's one way to get more data through a cartridge than is already being optimized.
Though if a manufacturer was ever to place a micro SD inside a Switch cartridge, it would be interesting to see if ROM swaps could be achieved.
Inb4 people start swapping games and trading them back to Gamestop for more money lol.
Larry Kozlowski GameStop normally checks to see if the games work before reselling them. If they find it's a different game they'll revoke the credits
My local gamestop from personal experience only checks if games look legit and not broken. I've never had them actually test a game (I've seen them check console returns). They also cant revoke cash transactions. You might get a ban from their locations tho.
Larry Kozlowski it might be likely they test the games in the back room or something, they won't sell a broken game or in this case a switched game
I wont disagree with that. Btw... A SWITCHED Switch game lul. Sorry im tired.
GoldenArrow Clearly you didn't keep up with their Retro program.
If the board isn't necessary and it's even cheaper, why are there carts with a board in the first place? Wouldn't it make sense to save there as well if it doesn't change anything?
Wondered the same
I believe is for the following reasons: the 4GB chip might be standard, and already mass manufactured by some company, then is cheaper to just use those and go trough the pick and place and board manufacture than designing a custom chip for the 4GB. the cost of the board is negligible either case, the expensive part is the placing of the component on the board. Since for the 8GB and 16 GB they might have to make their own chips, then they go te extra mile to put the pins on the chip with the exact format of the cards-
That makes sense, I didn't think of that.
I'm sure this cuts out a significant cost in the cartridge. In the manufacturing process for the simpler cart, since the contacts are on the chip itself, they can go straight from chip to putting it in the cart, pretty straight forward. In the other cart, the chip has to go through a much more involved process: make/acquire PCB boards, glue parts to boards (not to mention, those extra discreet parts add extra cost and logistics), solder parts to PCB, electrical test the soldered PCB to verify there are no shorts or missed solder joints, then, finally, put the PCB in the cart). I'm sure skipping this whole process cut more than a few cents from each cart, possibly whole dollars.
My main take away from this is.... I need to remember to buy the Resident Evil games for my switch. lol But this is kinda cool to know. I remember a lot of old cartridge games being different depending on the game, but I didn't think they'd still be making different cartridge types today.
It looks like some chip manufacturer partnered with Nintendo to supply chips with the cartridge's contact pattern directly on the chip. I see such a partnership as good news.
The chip on the green board looks similar to the ones found in flash drives. I wonder how similar they really are. Maybe the black chips are to make them less similar and harder to copy?
This was so satisfying to watch. Thank you so much.
I love your orange joy-controllers. And yeah that's interesting to see one of those taken apart. I wonder what other cartridges from older consoles look like taken apart.
but do they taste different? does the black taste like average bitter and the green tastes like lemon?
Green is lime rather than lemon.
more like the green one tastes like a sour milk, but the black one like a sour salmon, TBH iz very nice, much recommend
One tastes like bitter lemon, the other one is just regular bitter.
Engine coolant flavored?
Looking at the smaller game these look relatively easy to create bootlegs for, get a emmc reader, copy then burn clones to some emmc chips and order a bunch of pcbs(these look like they can be made for under 25¢s a pop based on size) solder the chip to the pcb. The biggest issue is the case but if you only trying to pass them as a bootleg then a 3d printed one would work that Or get some company in China to make them.
i don't know how different they are inside but i do know that the bigger one taste better
edit: holy shit this video has 740 likes and no dislikes
I gasped in horror when you held BOTW, I was like please do not mess with that cartridge, thanks for not prying that one.
After this video i see a lot of angry parents with cartridges glued inside the slot.
Single game Switch. Haha thats funny
Nice video! I didn't expect the cards being different
Love these videos, straight to the point and information that we can understand.
Thank you Spawn, you're AMAZING!!!
No dislike ! People love you!
That green thing is called pcb (printed circuit board). That black thing looks like custom chip
That's interesting, didn't know there was different style chips.
interesting
IckySticky
Really interesting.
so interesting
I thought that precisely at 3:52 (interesting)
Impossibly interesting.
i must say this is pretty
p r e t t y
p r e t t y
p r e t t y
interesting.
Is it not made that way because the chip is too thick to fit the circuit board into the cartridge? That was my guess, anyway.
Wow, super interesting. I would have never known there was no circuit board. Techies assemble!!!!
The green ones are PCBs and the Dark grey ones are Pure microchip encapsulations in thermoresin similar to Micro SD cards. And you are completely wrong about the whole "save money" thing. PCBs are actually cheaper to produce than this direct encapsulation method (which is more high-end and dense). My guess is that they made it that way because a PCB version would become way too big to fit inside the cartridge housing. The only problem I see with direct encapsulation is that it's not as repairable as the PCB one... If the contacts go bad... The repair would be more complicated and expensive than a PCB.
The updated design probably isn't as much of a cost saving measure as it is an updated design on how they press the ROM chip's die into the chip carrier. This would be similar, if not the same as, modern CPUs having contact points, which are microscopic bumps made out of lead or some other updated material, that actually press up side down onto the chip carrier package. A lot of this is necessary, not because it cut costs, but because of decreasing transistor size during fabrication.
The smaller the transistor size, smaller the chip die, which means you can either make more at once to cut overall costs per unit, or make bigger capacity ROM chips. Cutting manufacturing costs of the package itself would come as an extra bonus.
Also, I got a D Pad like that, works awesome.
There are a lot of extra steps and logistics that go into the process involving the PCB board, that can all be skipped when the contacts are right on the chip. I wager it does save some cost.
Oh absolutely it does. I just don't believe that is the primary reason.
I bet it's just a size issue the bigger capacity chips just fit in the case on their own without the need for the board to take up the excess space.
What is the purpose of the board then?
Really?
A way to use cheaper chips that have standard feet/pins
I would not be sure that they save money by omitting the PCB or that was the primary concern.
Remember when Nintendo could not meet supply for the demand for the switch at launch?
Maybe they have learned and now have (at least for the cartridges) are true second source with a different, but compatible tech.
I can tell you: The market for "specialized" electronic components (e.g. RAM, ROM, Flash, ...) is pretty consolidated - when a bigger manufacturer places a bulk order, even money can not buy you a production slot in the fab for the next few months.
You’re so underrated man i don’t know how you haven’t blew up now.
Props for still mounting your Scorpio box up looking like that I respect that
Wait. So theoretically, with 2 of the small cart you could theoretically create a double sided card?
I took open the WWE 2K cart and found a dead monster
To get the chip to have that contact pattern they would have to use a pcb, but that looks to be a bga package shot with epoxy to keep it from vibrating and ultimately breaking the solder balls, also since its bga they can add a couple layers to the board design, but cut back on area used and it does save money in mass production bga chips normally come cheaper than flat packs too, but i imagine that a 1gbit chip prolly doesnt come in a bga package nor is it more economical to use one
But the big memory chip does still have a pcb
that pin method is very common, the sandisk cruiser usb drives do the same thing
"Spawn Wave does it so that you don't have to". Sincerely thank you, from a fellow critical diamantler
Was hoping for this analysis. Thanks
I just noticed that my splatoon 2 cartridge actually have green line at the back but my other games don't have because it a bigger cartridge
This explains why the physical version of Super Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild loads significantly faster than their digital counterparts. Less in the way from the source to the Switch makes it naturally faster, plus the cartridges are naturally just super faster to begin with. Nintendo definitely did not cheap out when it comes to the physical cartridge for Switch games is for sure.
I don't see why the cartridges would "naturally" be super faster then the NAND built into the Switch. Unless Nintendo cheaped out on the NAND. It is essentially the same tech that is in the carts.
I think it's less to do with the carts and more to do with the game and how it loads. These carts are probably just as fast as the NAND on the system.
@@jonmayer That is what I am thinking. He is probably thinking of digital games isntalled on SD cards but doesn't mention where the games are installed at all in his comment which he should with the context of what he is saying considering the NAND and SD cards are different tech at completely different read speeds. The blanket statement of "carts are naturally faster" can be misleading.
@@brianransom16 That makes sense. I assume that is why save games don't save to the cart anymore too like they did before because they would need to be writable.
Shows In the price of games
I wonder if it is possible to install a program inside a memory card and putting it into the switch using another game's shell and memory card.
After watching this video I checked the back of my switch cartridges and I was surprised that games like splatoon 2 and pokken tournament deluxe were on big cartridges and skyrim and BotW are apparently on smaller cartridges
You know, I think I’ll actually sub to your channel. You’re very informative and you’re not like CND or Ob1 that sometimes I feel like I waste my time after their videos.
I wonder if Nintendo is future proofing the Switch. I'm thinking for right now the cost to put a game on a chip is pretty high right now, but maybe further down the future they'll be cheaper. That's just my opinion.
I opened a cartridge once and it left me in hospital. Turns out sawing into shotgun ammo is a bad idea.
Works fine if you use a knife and poke the plastic part. I know from experience. For metal cased ammo, there's a thing called a bullet puller that does the same thing.
But you're right, sawing into ammo is probably a bad idea.
Haha
i see what u did there
That transparent orange Switch is nice.
Never even knew some cards were bigger than others
I think this is right but, the ones with darker backs have the official Nintendo logo on the front, but the ones with green backs either have it with something else (Poken Tournament), or they don’t have it at all (Evil Revelations). So basically, the darker back indicates that it is purely from Nintendo, but green backs indicate that it involved another company.
Always love these types of videos from you man.
The homebrew community has known about this since shortly after launch
Im just here to say i like your transparent joycons
WTF where'd he get those?! IWANT EM!
I never noticed the different colors. I checked out my collection and yep some games are green and some are black. Kinda cool. @Spawnwave thanks for that tid-bit of information.
That is very interesting on how they save money on things like that. Also Span wave where did you get those orange joycons?
watching you handle that blade made me nervous.
Great video! Such crazy differences!
I wasn’t expecting it to be that interesting but it actually was, kudos
So we will be able to work out if Ubisoft, EA, WB and Activision-Blizzard are cheaping out on cartridges
From the reading that I've been doing, I understand that there are 8GB carts and 32GB carts...They were supposed to start allowing customers to ship their products on 64GB carts, but due to some testing issues they've pushed that option back to 2019. So theoretically the Switch carts will have a little over a standard single layer Blu-Ray disc sometime next year.
i thought standard single layer was 25 gigs?
Ah yes it appears I misread. It's dual layers that are 50GB...Thanks for that correction.
no prob :)
though i gotta say that i hope they re-release some of the bigger games that require a digital download like bayo 1 and 2 or res rev 1 and 2...or just separate packages
less space used on my switch the better
They are release Bayo 1 and 2, and there's a 3 in production. I'm really looking forward to that because I loved Bayo 1 and never got to play Bayo 2 since I skipped the Wii U. Regardless of me getting the Blu-Ray size capacity wrong, I did go back and confirm that there will be 64GB Switch cards somewhere in 2019 which is a really good thing. Because, just like you said, storage is limited on the switch.
Yeah lets just hope developers actually use it.
Also with the cards that means games dont have to be partly downloaded onto the console to play, which is why i will probably look into the switch ports rather than the ps4 ones
eventually we may see ds style carts, with an sd slot, i will never understand why they didn't make them the same format as ds carts, having that library would have been cool.
the gold metal contacts on the non green pcb ones seems to scratch easy putting in and out of the switch. the green pcb ones i have still have zero scratches on the contacts. in other words the gray ones are the cheap ones.
THIS is the stuff I like. Awesome & Thank You!!!
*Do you think you can do some interview research to see if your cost hypothesis is correct, then update us?*
Those joy cons look really cool
If the chip is that small for the 16-Gig cartridges, does that mean putting two of those in a cartridge would double the memory?
I don't think that's how it works. xD
Just a heads up, rubbing alcohol doesn’t actually remove cyanoacrylate (Super Glue)
Acetone does though (Nail polish remover)