19th February 2003, 1:39 PM
And that's a fact. Why do you think Nintendo has avoided internal lighting until now? Until this point, internal lights have been huge power consumers. Sorry, but as much as we would all like high capacity and cheap format for portable games, it won't happen if it means moving parts. Aside from that, there's also the wear and tear. Moving parts are more susceptible to damage than non-moving parts, and on a portable, that means the system will wear out more quickly. Then there's orientation. Currently, even drives that claim to be able to do a vertical can't do so for long without some sort of alignment problem or other break down (*cough* PS2), so how do you expect a drive to be able to take being held in all sorts of directions, from straight horizontal and straight vertical, to everthing in between and other stuff like being hung upsidedown. It's just something that won't last long.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)