Big Switch Cartridges VS Small Carts! Is There A Difference? | Tech Wave
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- Опубліковано 27 січ 2018
- 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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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?
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
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
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.
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 :)
I love these videos, I always find the inner workings of electronics super interesting, so these are especially great to me :)
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.
Def my favorite type of videos on this channel! I’d love to see more tech wave ones in the future @spawnwavemedia
This was so cool. Thanks for risking a couple games to show us this! :)
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.
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
Always love these types of videos from you man.
Love these videos, straight to the point and information that we can understand.
Genuinely surprised. I was just expecting a grey board!
Nice video! I didn't expect the cards being different
Thank you Spawn, you're AMAZING!!!
A channel that opens things up and tinkers with them? Subscribed ♡
Stops me from damaging things I can't afford to break 😂
This was so satisfying to watch. Thank you so much.
Was hoping for this analysis. Thanks
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.
Great video! Such crazy differences!
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!
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. UA-cam's policies have gotten worse and worse for small-time youtubers.
very cool, i had no idea that they looked like this inside, or that there were different types!
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.
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
You’re so underrated man i don’t know how you haven’t blew up now.
I've been stumbling across your videos on my recommended recently... the content is so good that i don't mind xd
Very neat, is kind of rare for a manufacturer to go with a custom packaging for a chip.
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
Another quality Tech video Jon(SW). Very interesting stuff and I wonder how much are these Carts.
This is really interesting I always wondered why there was black and green switch chips.
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?
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.
Wow good video man 👍🏾
That backing is called the solder mask, it prevents foreign objects from shorting out traces and damaging the device
I love this kind of videos
After this video i see a lot of angry parents with cartridges glued inside the slot.
Single game Switch. Haha thats funny
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).
Props for still mounting your Scorpio box up looking like that I respect that
I wasn’t expecting it to be that interesting but it actually was, kudos
great video, thanks for posting
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.
Hey! That BIG Cartridge looks exactly like what the insides of a PSVITA cart
ive also seen it in a couple USB Drives!
Very interesting, thanks for the video.
Lovin this new outro music!
Those joy cons look really cool
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??
i had to check what channel this was, you looked jacked my dude.
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.
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 ;)
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
Nice video, thanks!
I was wondering do you think it would be possible to write to these chips and turn it into an "sd card" that could have movies on it? or just loads movies on the sd card and create a way to open them on the switch to watch (the goal is to watch offline movie/movies)
who knows they might add more stuff to the cart like how they added extra hardware in the old carts
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.
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.
That is very interesting on how they save money on things like that. Also Span wave where did you get those orange joycons?
*Cool thanks for saving us time to cut the games, greatly appreciated*
No dislike ! People love you!
That's interesting, didn't know there was different style chips.
Great content. You're doing it right.
Lance Simpson
*you’re
AlphaDemo fixed hope you can sleep now.
Lance Simpson
Thank you
*goes to sleep peacefully*
that pin method is very common, the sandisk cruiser usb drives do the same thing
Now I wanna know why the version number is out of place on switch for just dance 2018-just dance 2018 demo
I got a Switch recently and I only have one physical game, once I removed it and inserted back right after and it couldn’t be read. How common is that? Thanks
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.
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.
Good video 👍
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
Definitely didn’t expect that either
I saw your joycon has a + directional. What kind of case of joycon model is that? Thanks mate, aprecited the video!
just wondering...that d pad mod u did...do u find it good ? @spawn wave
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.
Can you share theLink to buy those joycon exterior?
You rock dude
I gasped in horror when you held BOTW, I was like please do not mess with that cartridge, thanks for not prying that one.
Hey spawn wave, where did u get that joy on with the dpad?
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
The homebrew community has known about this since shortly after launch
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
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.
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.
That green thing is called pcb (printed circuit board). That black thing looks like custom chip
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.
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 like your red joycon case. Where did you get them from?
Nice joy cons
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?
That transparent orange Switch is nice.
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.
How do you get those transparent orange joy-cons?
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.
I really wonder what the outro music is hehe. its so chill.
Which one? cant seem to find it. Really would like to know ^^
This is very interesting.
Where do i recognize that end music from??
Alex Faulkner reminds me of an older GTA music
It’s Mario kart 64 haha
MinutesB4Midnight Thumbs up. I was just about to say Mario kart 64.
skullgirls?
Im just here to say i like your transparent joycons
WTF where'd he get those?! IWANT EM!
Use a heat gun or blow dryer to reactivate the adhesive so that it will be easier to take apart.
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.
I knew about this since day 1of owning the Switch lol (BOTW and 12switch at launch)