this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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I like to think that if streaming didn't take over, the industry would have shifted to selling USB sticks with the media/game. Even if they did something goofy to "lock" it, at least being on a thumb drive would be more durable, compact, and have faster read time.
Imagine a nicely organized self of DvDs turned into nighmare pile of flash drives of different shapes and sizes as each movie tries to make theirs stand out to make up the lack of a cover.
We have this audiobook player for children in my country. That works by buying those little figures and if you place them on the player, the audiobook plays. I think that a system like that for "adult music" would be awesome. Buy some little figures and art pieces by your favorite band, display them on a shelf and use them to play music? Yeah, that would be awesome
But you know the media is not in the figurine, right? Tonies only have a small RFID chip in them that give the Tonybox an ID to download from their server. Once the company dies these things will turn into bricks.
My small nephews also have these and I think they're great. Just not very resilient, data conservation wise
Yeah, I know.
Actualy, thumb drive flash is the lowest quality, cheapest one (the yield thing, the outer parts of the waver). Do not expect your data to keep longer than a few ~~hours~~ weeks.
Edit:
To add, it's a gamble; most are ok, some get data corruption on write, some after weeks. The "cheap" part is, because they aren't expected to last more than a few TBW.
Is this supposed to be a joke about storing data on your thumb? Also thumbs are not cheap, probably....I hope.
Not a joke. And why the downvote? Quality distribution is generally SSD > SD-cards > thumbdrives. Thumbdrives are no backup medium.
Wasn't me, but I'm guessing because you said they only last a few hours? I took that ridiculous exaggeration and assumed you meant writing notes on your thumb.
I said, don't expect your data to last longer than a few hours. Because that's how yields work, defective areas get firmware-disabled in the factory. Lower quality has only more of them, with less strict quality requirements to count as ok.
To admit, i've had few and late hours sleep the last few days, the autism sticks through. I'll revisit the original comment.
Don't worry, you're damn right about the quality of those things. They have crap flashes, they're slow and fail all the time, even most of the "better" ones. I'm shocked sometimes at how much people can trust these devices for some reason
Nintendo sells essentially a SD card variant in a case for the swtich. So you're not far off :)
The NGage even used literal SD cards.
The Dreamcast VMUs, which doubled as tomigotchis or whatever
Realistically the connector would have been proprietary, but I can see a world where we got cartridges that came in little cases like the games for nintendo ds or switch.
A system of organization would be invented. Idk maybe a wooden stepped board with USB sized holes that you store/display your collection in, just to use the first idea I pull directly from ass. Actually make it silicone for the grippy, already improving it, then sell the wood as a fancier looking one, and inlay a few with idk brass or something for a "pro" version, boom, marketing.
I'm sure there would be a million options, yours sounds quite fancy, and it will work great until Disney decides to sell giant mouse shaped drives ruining the whole thing.