There are rumours floating about that Nintendo's next game system might go back to game cartridges, which is pretty much exactly "shipping software on a little SSD".
Do ROMs come this big? SSDs make a shitty long term storage solution as they require continuous write cycles to keep the data alive which causes damage to the flash over time
Can't imagine a 512GB ROM would ever be economical given the cost to manufacture and make manufacturing changes to such a beast
How in the world are you going to get the scale anywhere near the same as the flash market though?
I have been wondering about going back to carts. When I see a 64GB Flash Drive for $10 retail I have to think that that the price premium over pressed Blu-Ray disks starts to make sense. You can significantly cut down on loading times, avoid obnoxious installs to the local disk, and have potentially more flexibility in the future to release larger games that don't require multiple disks.
Plus, the optical drive is one of if not the most failure prone component on the system (next to only the fan), so eliminating it could cut down considerably on returns and warranty claims.
The problem is that your competition isn't Flash Drives at probably $5/per in bulk. It's Blu-Ray disks that cost $0.005/per in bulk. Plus you need to build up a factory to make massive ROMs, since most people doing this are targeting sizes in the handful of KB. You can't even take advantage of competition in the marketplace because your product will be so specialized. Not like the disk pressing houses that are all over China.
