We all know how cartridges were replaced by cds, but maybe now the cartridges or at least their decendents are ready for a comeback. The six reasons for this are durability, pirating, loading, rewritability, increased storage space, and lower production costs in comparison to ten years ago. I read somewhere about the DS using cards of some sort and MS using SD cards for memory next gen. Maybe carts have gotten good enough now that we may be missing out on new revolution in gaming. The rewrtability of a cartridge could change everything once again. Everyone up until know has been willing to buy memory cards for their cd games that can't be saved upon. Cutting this middle man of software out would be great. Obviously harddrives are not the answer as MS themselves are not going to have one in X2. I'm a fan of the harddrive; especially in online games, but if each game unit can double as its own memory card then we have no problem at all as long as there is room for things such as level creation, recorded events, leveling, online stats, budy lists, and general saves. People just don't realize the conveniances that can be gained by going to some form of cartridge.
I'm not sure people would be accepting of it at first since they all love their slow fragile cds and dvds. If the cost of development has gone down considerably then why not go back to the carts? Plus getting rid of the whole memory card issue will save Nintendo from making anymore cards with unsufficient amounts of space to save a season on a huge franchise launch title like Madden.