At Space World 2000 in Tokyo, Japan, Nintendo finally unveiled the GameCube console along with a host of its most important features. A proprietary 1.5GB Nintendo GameCube Optical Disc was announced as the console's official medium, and the company introduced its unique Digicard -- a tiny memory card which could be plugged into the front of the GameCube machine to offer 4-megabits (1/2MB) of rewritable data for game saves.

Realizing that a mere half-megabyte of memory-card data wasn't a whole lot, Nintendo also unveiled the SD-Digicard Adapter, a small addition which could be connected to the 4-megabit Digicard to allow Matsushita's standard Secure Digital (SD) Cards to work with GameCube. SD Cards, which are already established around the world and used in such devices as digital cameras and MP3 players, offer a data storage capacity beginning at 8MBs and running up to 64MBs currently, with even bigger cards planned.

So what is the purpose of all these memory cards? Does anybody need more data storage capacity than what the basic 4-megabit Digicard delivers? Should one invest in the more expensive SD Cards to gain more memory for their GameCube software? We take a close look at Nintendo's strategy with its memory devices and break down the strengths and weaknesses of each for gamers below.

GameCube Digicard Slots

Number of Available Slots: Two



Above, the GameCube's Digicard slot. While there are four GCN controller ports, Nintendo has opted to include only two Digicard slots. The company believes that gamers will not need additional slots -- that two Digicards will suffice for most gameplay experiences. In an interview, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that the price increase of including two more slots was significant enough for the company to reconsider.

Digicard

Release Date: November 5, 2001

Estimated Price: $19.95

The standard memory storage device for Nintendo's GameCube console, the Digicard will be available at system launch with an estimated price tag of $19.95. The Digicard provides 4-megabits of data storage, or roughly 512k -- 1/2MB, in other words. The Digicard's memory solution is tiny when compared to the 8MB cards that have become standard with Sony's PlayStation 2. But it is larger than the regular Memory Paks that Nintendo 64 utilized, which weighed in normally at 128k to 256k. While the Digicard's 4-megabits will probably be large enough to store saves and minor customizations in GCN software, it will undoubtedly not supply enough data storage to hold more than the basics. For example, a fully customized track in a racer or full season statistic tracking in a sports game would almost certainly overload the limited amount of memory present on the device.

SD-Digicard Adapter

Release Date: November 5, 2001

Estimated Price: $10-20

The SD-Digicard Adapter replaces the standard Digicard and allows GameCube to interface with SD Cards which provide much more memory. It is not yet known how Nintendo will distribute this device. There is a possibility that it will come packaged with a Digicard purchase, or the company could sell it separately for a cheap price. The SD-Digicard Adapter is not so important as the medium it allows GameCube to utilize. SD Cards provide greater data storage than the GCN standard Digicard, and the only way to access them is through the adapter.

Secure Digital (SD) Cards -- The Future of GCN Storage





Secure Digital (SD) Cards are a fast-access, large data storage memory solution created by Matsushita, Inc. and other third-party vendors. It is used commonly in a wide variety of devices throughout the world. SD Cards, like the Sony Memory Stick, have no moving parts, which is why they are perfect for portable devices that must conserve energy such as MP3 players and digital cameras.

Though they allow for big storage, the physical SD Cards themselves are extremely tiny. Just a little over one-inch in height and slightly under one-inch in width, SD Cards are about the size of a postage stamp. They feature terminal guards at their front so that users will not accidentally insert them into devices incorrectly and a sliding switch located on the side of each card can be set to avoid unwanted erasing of data. The tiny size of the SD Cards, of course, makes them perfectly suited for portable accessories -- like your wallet.

Currently, SD Cards come in four available sizes, below:

SD Memory Card, 8MB

Release Date: Available Now

Price: $30

The same size as the standard PS2 memory card, the 8MB SD Card holds 16 times the data of a GameCube Digicard. The current price of the 8MB SD Card is likely to decrease significantly before the GCN launch this November. All SD Cards can store audio, video, picture and voice files.

SD Memory Card, 16MB

Release Date: Available Now

Price: $40

Twice the size of a standard PS2 memory card, gamers looking to store more data than the average player may look to this card to satisfy their needs. This 16MB card should easily deliver enough storage capacity for most gaming needs. All SD Cards can store audio, video, picture and voice files.

SD Memory Card, 32MB

Release Date: Available Now

Price: $60

This card delivers as much memory storage as 64 Digicards combined. Many low-end MP3 players and digital cameras use the 32MB SD Card as standard, so it's a smart choice for gamers looking to use their GCN with other accessories. All SD Cards can store audio, video, picture and voice files.

SD Memory Card, 64MB

Release Date: Available Now

Price: $99

The 64MB SD Card delivers all the memory of Nintendo's ill-fated add-on console the 64DD, and all the functionality too. The read/write memory SD Cards make them the perfect solution for an interactive game such as Mario Paint, and with 64MBs of data to play with, there's almost nothing gamers won't be able to store on this particular card. All SD Cards can hold audio, video, picture and voice files.

SD Storage to Come

Secure Digital (SD) Cards will continue to grow in size, which will in turn cause existing cards to decrease in price. By the time GCN launches in November, the 8MB Card should be in the $20 and under range, which will align it to undersell Sony's own model for PS2. But Nintendo GameCube owners won't have to stop at 8MBs of memory -- they can update as new SD cards become available. Check out the SD Card Consortium's own expansion plans below:

As you can see, 256MB and 512MB SD Cards are planned before the end of the year -- both of which dwarf the memory capabilities of Nintendo's 64DD device. And as data storage increases, so do data transfer rates. By the year 2003 a 1GB SD Card with a data transfer rate of 20MBs a second will be available -- with a very hefty price tag no doubt. Soon after that Panasonic will release a 4GB SD Card.

The Issue of Price

The SD Card prices above were quoted to us directly from a spokesperson for the SanDisk Corporation, the world's largest supplier of flash memory products and co-licenser of SD products, but they are not absolute. Some electronics retailers are selling the cards at a higher cost and others have actually gone under the suggested retail price. In our research, we found that the 8MB SD Card sold at select retail outlets for as high as $49, and yet other retailers like Circuit City sold 16MBs for $30 -- $20 cheaper. We even found a 64MB SD Card for less than $70 at one electronics outlet.

One thing is for sure, though, which is that the prices of SD Cards will drop drastically over the span of Nintendo GameCube's life. Matsushita, the maker of the memory solution, recently announced plans to drop the prices of the format by 90% over the next five years. But the results of the cost reductions will be felt even sooner. According to the SanDisk Corporation's Bob Goligoski, "SD Cards selling for $100 now will sell for only $20 in two years." With that, even a 64MB SD Card ¿ essentially a 64DD -- could sell for less than $30 by the time 2003 rolls around.

The SD Community

The fact that Nintendo has chosen Secure Digital Cards as part of its memory solution for GameCube is by no coincidence. Matsushita's SD Cards are already utilized in many devices across the board, and they are widely accepted across the world.



Left to right: SD recorder, SD MP3 portable MP3 player, SD Car Stereo MP3 player, SD Camcorder and SD Digital Camera

In researching this article, we visited several major electronics dealers in search of SD Card products. We easily found Panasonic-branded video cameras, MP3 players and even personal digital recording devices (used primarily for interview purposes), but could not locate SD Card car stereos or mini-disc players, as seen above. While Matsushita has already taken baby steps with its memory medium, it's clear that the company still has its work cut out for it if it plans to compete on the same level as Sony's Memory Stick, which has already become a stylish storage standard in dozens of Sony-branded portable devices. Supposing Matsushita does step up to the challenge, and considering the amount of money it has already invested in SD Cards it will, then Nintendo's dream of gameplay interactivity that crashed with the 64DD may finally be realized.

64DD on Your Thumb

Nintendo initially had big dreams for its ill-fated N64 add-on device, 64DD. But the expansion, which was first hinted at as far back as late 1995, didn't come out until December of 1999 in Japan and it was horribly outmatched by competing systems. The ambitions with the 64DD, though, were admirable, and though the add-on itself was officially discontinued by Nintendo, the benefits it would have brought to the table will live on through SD Card media on GameCube.

The 64DD offered Nintendo 64 owners 64MBs of additional storage read/write memory to be used with interactive games on Nintendo's console; it featured an internal clock so that games could adhere to real night and day time and yearly seasons, and it came packaged standard with the 4MB Expansion Pak, which brought the combined RAM of the two systems to 8MBs. The problem Nintendo faced with its add-on device, though, was that it was still 1) too expensive to mass-market, 2) it didn't up the power of N64, 3) only a handful of games used its benefits and 4) it only had a handful of games ¿ period. Plus, by the time 64DD came out in Japan, 64MB N64 games already existed, which of course diluted the impact of what was perhaps the device's biggest selling point ¿ it was supposed to offer more storage than N64 carts did.

Nintendo GameCube, on the other hand, uses proprietary 1.5GB Optical Discs ¿ more than twice the size of standard CDs ¿ as its primary game medium; it has its own real-time clock; and virtually every game will support external SD Card media for saves and customizations. SD Cards as small as a postage stamp will be able to do everything that Nintendo's 64DD could, but they will be cheaper, and they will offer a connection to a wide variety of SD supported products.

The Possibilities

The interactivity possibilities with the 64DD were immense, but Nintendo chose for the most part not to explore them. However, with GameCube and SD Card media, console gaming could be improved greatly, especially so far as interaction between the player and game goes. With titles like the Mario Artist franchise for 64DD, gamers could snap pictures of themselves with a GB Camera and upload them to their DD with a capture cartridge. From there, the pictures could be modified, applied to the bodies of polygonal figures and even made to animate.



A face editor in Mario Artist Talent Studio for 64DD

That degree of customization has rarely been offered in PC games before, let alone home console ones. Imagine taking a picture of your friend's (or enemy's) face, mapping it onto the body of a monkey, or a clown, or a winged dancer, and then making it prance around girlishly and blow kisses. That's exactly what we did to IGNPS2 editor Doug Perry when we got our 64DD. Check out the results here.

The ideas with the Mario Artist series were sound, but the process of grabbing images and transferring them was clunky at best. The black and white, low-resolution pictures captured with the GB Camera were hardly pretty, the power limitations of N64 didn't help in the geometry department, and besides -- the equipment needed just to get them to the 64DD was decidedly pricey.

However, in the near future all one needs to do is take a high-resolution digital picture with their SD Card-equipped camera and then plug their SD memory into the GameCube digicard adaptor, where it can then be uploaded into software. The limitations of how many pictures one can upload is really only dependent upon what size SD card they own.

But it doesn't stop there. SD Cards can also store MP3 and music files, so it would be possible to upload MP3 music and sound effects into GameCube titles and customize them ¿ that is, if the software permitted it. In a game like MTV Music Generator, for example, which enables gamers to create their own techno-licious music tracks, one could download samples onto an SD Card and then upload them into the game where they could be used in music.

Of course, these examples barely scrape the surface of what's possible with a large-storage interactive memory solution like SD Cards. When software allows it, gamers could literally create their own characters from head-to-toe, using digital cameras to upload face and body textures, advanced polygonal morphing software tools to customize their appearance, and digital sound files for the trademark one-liners that every would-be hero has. Characters ¿ fully customized, could then be stored on the SD Card and used in other software. Don't want to play as Link in Zelda for GameCube? No problem. Upload your replacement. Tired of battling against other Pokemon as Pikachu. Pop in your SD Card and upload yourself into the game.

It's all possible. The only question is, will developers make it happen? If Nintendo's experiments with the 64DD drive are any indication, it strongly believes in the possibilities of customization in its software. With that, the company is already poised to pave the way for a new level of interactivity to come. Input the dropping prices of SD Cards and the necessity to separate itself from competing consoles, and we wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Big 'N' release a GameCube title with an SD Card packed in by 2003 ¿ one that would sell the medium and the idea.

What it All Boils Down To

While many overlook or write off SD Cards and their friendship with GameCube as a Nintendo afterthought, the medium and what it is capable of solidly delivering should not be underestimated. By the time GCN releases in the US, 16MB SD Cards will be available for roughly the same price as 8MB PS2 Memory Cards ¿ and 8MB SD Cards will be considerably cheaper. Players looking for nothing more than quick saves and small customizations needn't look any further than these, but videogame interactivity is bound to be raised to a new level in the years to come, Nintendo is likely to be on the forefront, and GameCube owners can be right their with it as bigger, faster and cheaper SD Card media ships.

-- By Matt Casamassina