This is based on an inaccurate analysis from a non-expert.
Switch game cards use Macronix XtraROM. These games are rated by the company for data retention shelf life of 20 years at 85°C / 185°F. But it depends on environmental conditions like humidity, and 20 years is an extremely conservative estimate. It’s safe to say they will last much longer than that.
DS and 3DS games use an older version of Macronix technology, and critically also write to the cartridge itself. These will likely have issues long before Switch games do, although it should still be a long time.
Magnetic media was rated for a similar lifespan and in most cases still works fine 50 years later. The rare issues with CDs are due to manufacturing defects like glue separation, not the technology itself. These are, again, exacerbated by environmental factors. CDs are 30 years old at this point and the worst iteration of optical media, and the overwhelming majority work fine.
Different technologies, but just included for comparison.
If you’re concerned about it, dump them to SSD RAID storage.
dump them to SSD RAID storage.
Because people totally have DS/3DS/NX card readers and do personal exports before running their emulators. (/s obviously)
The reality is that for 99.999% of owners of these consoles, they’re probably going to boot up their old games and wonder where the saves are, if the old games even work anymore. I’ve already had this happen to the PS Vita with their first party hardware, I should have found a way to install a CFW and get micro SD cards working instead, but I paid for all my licenses and for expensive first party memory cards and now i’m SOL, just like most people.
Simply powering up the SSD on occasion does not help. SSDs get slower over time, the parts of the SSD hosting the operating system mostly gets read, not written, and those sectors degrade, slowing down the computer. At least in the Windows world reinstalling Windows speeds up the computer for this reason.
https://mstdn.social/@paulc/114517758255971698
Head’s up.
which presents the obvious problem: if you have sealed games you’re hoping will increase in value over time, these could potentially become unplayable at some point.
It doesn’t matter what’s in the sealed box…
Because after a certain point opening the box ruins it as a collectible.
It matters if you value it less as a collectible and more as a preserved, playable copy.
And within 5-10 years, no one is buying it to play…
It’s a moot point.
If the original buyer bought to play, they wouldn’t wait so long the cart goes bad.
And after 5-10 years there’s no reason to overpay for a sealed copy to play.
You can just pirate a dump of the game and flash it on if you want to actually play it.
It’s a cognitive dissonance thing for collectors. They want the preserved, playable copy but they don’t ever want to break the seal because that lowers the value.
I bet there are a bunch of collectors out there in possession of empty game boxes (with placebo weights) that have been expertly resealed and then submitted to grading companies for a seal of approval.
I honestly wonder about this. What will collectors value be for sealed items in 50 years when the game inside is almost certainly useless?
The same as for a comic book that hasn’t left it’s rated sleeve in 30 years, and never will again without ruining the value.
It doesn’t matter what happens after you open it, if no one is going to open it.
The value remains unchanged because long before degradation comes into play, what people are buying is the rarity.
I don’t think collectors who buy sealed items ever intend to ooen it up, tbh
Sharing helps avoid data loss
Collaborative Data redundancy
Reason number 1,000,000 why we should backup our games. And any companies who say otherwise cough Nintendo cough should not be allowed to shut down archival and backup projects.
NAND can hold data only so long without power being applied. This is why it’s useful to a), plug-in NAND based devices like some cartridges, SSDs, USB keys etc and b) why you should always have backups on different technologies.
Wait what’s the risk if they don’t?
You plug the card in, the data has degraded to the point of unusability, and the game doesn’t function anymore.
“Card Inserted.”
“It has been 11 years since this card has been inserted.”
"Deleting data…”
“and banning your account”
Also use something like Balena Etcher to keep an image handy - Have an nbernic with 16k games on it and what a pain it would be to go and reassemble all that.
