Was just brainstorming about something. The thing I like so much about the cartridges is the fact that they contain the savegames and they are silent while playing them. There have been quite some discussions about how to get some kind of a way to play a game without a disc and I came up with an idea:
Why not make a small cartridge (not containing the full game, just the game ID, the save game space and some kind of DRM) which can be inserted in the Wii U and you have to download the game to the Wii U (obviously for cost reduction, if you would have the full games on cartridges, prices of the cartridges would be way too high) to be able to play the game. Though, you will also have to insert the cartridge to play, this in first case to ensure you have legally purchased the game, but secondly to save your game.
This way you will have all the perks of the cartridge (except for the one, the full game on the cartridge) and all the perks of downloaded games!
They could still do this theoretically, though I would not see them doing it of course, but this would be one hell of a sweet way to solve many small annoyances with disc based games. No more scratching, save games on the cart and no noise, the only drawback is that you need to download the game which can take some time before you can play your game.
This way you could also sell your Wii U and keep your games including save games, play your game at friends with your save data and much more. I think this would be pretty easy to do and a lot of people would like this as well, might be wrong there of course.
They would have to keep the disc based releases of course, if they would ever even think of doing this , to implement this way of making a game play on the Wii U.
Just wanted to discuss how people would look at this option if it were to be released.