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[A Black Falcon]

I'm sure a CD-based N64 would probably have been more successful than the N64 was, in Japan particularly, but I've always thought that Nintendo made the right decision anyway -- that generation, the kinds of games Nintendo wanted to make are better on cartridge, period.

- no way Squaresoft would have dared to take the risk to develop for the PS1

I wouldn't be so sure about this! Square and Nintendo didn't only break over the CD thing, they also had other arguments. Square didn't like how controlling Nintendo was being on things (didn't they have disagreements over Mario RPG?), and Sony's low licensing fees would have been a strong lure too. I think that even with a CD-based N64, there's a very good chance that Square would at minimum have gone multiplatform. They could well have even abandoned Nintendo even if the N64 had a CD drive, the Nintendo/Square split was real.

- many more developers would have supported it

This is likely true, particularly in Japan, but the N64 fan's argument has always been about quality over quantity, so... ah well. Better games is more important than more games, overall.

- Nintendo could have countered the low license fees of the PS1

Maybe they COULD have, but they wouldn't have. Gamecube licensing fees were still higher than Sony's, for example. And Saturn licensing fees were in between PS1 and N64, too. Sony intentionally undercut its competition in licensing fees, and while a CD-based N64 would have made Nintendo's fees lower, they surely would still have been above Sony's.

- with the RAM expansion the N64 would have been on par with the Saturn 2D games

The N64 could do 2d games just as well or better than Saturn as it is! All it needed was Nintendo to have a 2d-centric microcode available to developers and for developers to want to make 2d games on the N64.

Now, technically N64 and PS1 '2d' is actually done with flat polygons, while the Saturn actually does sprites, but for the player that difference doesn't matter. Look at the 2d games the N64 had, it could have done 2d fighting games JUST fine had developers made them. Remember, the N64 has only two entirely 2d fighting games, MK Trilogy and KI Gold, and both were 1996 releases on 8MB cartridges. N64 cartridges got larger over time (16MB added in late '97, 32MB in late '98, 64MB in '99, and 40MB in '00), so later on 2d fighting games could have been even better, without the cuts that games like those two launch titles had due to space limitations.

Going with cartridges was a stupid idea. Later ones even had loading times because they had to be decompressed.

If the multiverse theory is not just bullshit, I'd love to travel to a universe where there was a CD-ROM N64.

No, cartridges were a good idea for the kind of games Nintendo wanted to make. You just couldn't do something like Mario 64 or OoT as good on 1995-1996 CD tech...

I dunno. Ocarina of Time loads the entirety of Hyrule Field at once without loading. I doubt that would have been possible on CD

Nintendo made this point back during the N64 generation, that you could not do Mario 64 on a CD because you can't stream all that stuff fast enough, compared to loading from a cart... and I believe it. A CD-based N64 would probably have smaller areas, and this would make games worse.

 

[orioto]

It's not only about the cdrom.

The gap Nintendo created at that time is way more complicated than that.

I'm not sure Square would have changed their strategy. I always thought their Sony strategy was ore than about just cdrom. It was also about future plans, conquering the movie industry.. Nintendo couldn't give them all that.

As for the problem with third party and the way they let the young adult audience go. it didn't go actually, it was never there. The videogame market was diminishing cause of a focus on teens, in the early 90's. Sony expanded the market with a more mature, "simulation" oriented, western audience. They marketed all that with a cool modern image, breaking the whole "kiddy family" image of the videogame before (even if Sega tried that to).

What i mean is that Nintendo's image problem, and refusal to follow a certain evolution of the videogame demographic, wasn't only due to cdrom, far from that.

Also about the 2D thing, this is not a techincal probem neither. Nintendo was against 2D at that point, they even refused (and killed) a 2D Rayman 2.

 

[The Beard]

More like, cartridges could have saved the Wii U.

 

[TVC 15]

The Saturn might have pulled some bullshit trickery to get 3D going on what was essentially their previous arcade System 24/32 hardware watered down, but if it has a Z axis (software or hardware) its still bloody 3D, whether its distorted quadratic texture maps or not. Sorry this is a massive bug-bearer for me, people never go on about how the 3DO had 3d tacked on despite the fact it used Quads and was slower than the Saturn. The way some people talk about the Saturn is as though it defies the laws of physics when any 3D is attempted.

And just to correct ABF, the Saturn does'nt have hardware sprites its just a really fast blitter just like the PS1 but designed to use quads.

Regardless the N64 might have fared better with CD's, but I still believe Sony would have come out on tops. Their choice of Carts was less to do with the proposed advantages advertised in the press and more to do with controlling the format.

Sony beat Nintendo and Sega with how they handled CD distribution, going direct to the reseller rather than wholesaler. Along with a bunch of other 1, 2 punches that hit their competition in all the right places. The PS1 handed Sega and Nintys ass to them on a plate and highlighted both companies competitive weaknesses and operational problems in the market. A perfect storm really.

The N64 would have probably featured some bullshit propriety optical media anyway like the Panasonic mini-disc 'thing' the GC used. Bleurgh.

 

[Lijik]

Why not?

This might be a tale from my ass, but wasnt the entire structure of Mario 64 derived from the cartridge size? They couldnt do as many levels as a 2D Mario, so instead of 90 stages like in Mario 3 they had 15 stages but 120 objectives spread across them.

Thats probably not the only factor that lead to Mario 64 being the way it is, but I can see an alternate universe where Mario 64 is more like Mario 3D World because of the amount of space a CD would have offered for levels.

Also about the 2D thing, this is not a techincal probem neither. Nintendo was against 2D at that point, they even refused (and killed) a 2D Rayman 2.

Ive never heard of that before! Do you have the full story behind that?

 

[JordanN]

Nintendo made this point back during the N64 generation, that you could not do Mario 64 on a CD because you can't stream all that stuff fast enough, compared to loading from a cart... and I believe it. A CD-based N64 would probably have smaller areas, and this would make games worse.

If Driver 2 could stream a whole city including moving cars and pedestrians,

I don't see why it couldn't stream Hyrule/Mario. The problems would be tied to hardware (i.e draw distance. PS1 was weaker at this).

 

[cartman414]

Honestly, if you want to go back to the point where they really fucked up it is not cartridge N64. It is pissing off Sony so that they make a console out of spite. After that point what would have happened if they went another way with the N64 is not exactly clear cut.



They could have, but they would have risked spurning Nintendo. This is the same company that had a feud with Square for so many years because of FF going to PSX, so I don't think they would have reacted positively to it.

A couple things on both statements: Sony hoodwinked Nintendo first with their "Cd-rom" clause in the SNES sound chip contract which would have given Sony software royalties (a big no-no for Nintendo), which was why Nintendo at the time abandoned the deal. They did strike up a new deal, and CD-Rom design, more favorable to Nintendo, only for Sony to leave and strike it on their own.

As for the Square deal, Yamauchi didn't lose too much sleep when they left. It was after Square responded out of spite towards said lack of reaction by convincing Enix, one of the few Nintendo 3rd party holdouts, to join Sony and the PSX that Yamauchi completely lost it.

Final Fantasy 7 as far as I know was never prototyped for the N64.

There was a concept video built on silicon workstations. Thats it.

FF7 for PSX still mainly happened because Nintendo stuck with cartridges.

It was enough, for the time being, that Square prototyped for the N64.

The N64 would have probably featured some bullshit propriety optical media anyway like the Panasonic mini-disc 'thing' the GC used. Bleurgh.

Those mini-discs cost about the same to manufacture. Optical media is still optical media.

 

[KojiKnight]

Too many people are blowing over the cost of CD-ROM tech of the time and the additional hardware needed to support it. Nintendo would have had to either gimp the rest of the tech in their console to make up for the added cost, or eaten the extra cost/passed it onto the customer to keep the system at a competitive price point.

 

[Sami+]

Sony might not have succeeded like they did, and might not have continued with the PS2. Nintendo would have remained king and never would have gone after the adult market like Sony did.

I shudder to think of an industry where Nintendo is the main leader. Gross.

 

[JordanN]

Too many people are blowing over the cost of CD-ROM tech of the time and the additional hardware needed to support it. Nintendo would have had to either gimp the rest of the tech in their console to make up for the added cost, or eaten the extra cost/passed it onto the customer to keep the system at a competitive price point.

Nintendo were looking into CD's with the SNES. I think they would have worked something out if they were going to make a whole console with it.

 

[cartman414]

Sony might not have succeeded like they did, and might not have continued with the PS2. Nintendo would have remained king and never would have gone after the adult market like Sony did.

I shudder to think of an industry where Nintendo is the main leader. Gross.

Undisputed main leader, you mean.

Nintendo has issues, but today they have more to do with their antiquated 3rd party support/outreach and user account systems.

 

[Refreshment.01]

Square were fine working with DS and PSP or Gameboy and Wonderswan. Both not requiring massive budgets.

I don't think Xbox is a good example, because everything about the console and its marketing were never on good terms with Japanese publishers. Even today, you see the xbox still skipped with games being exclusive to Playstation/Nintendo.

This is not helping your argument. Mainline Final Fantasy games (an important part of the scenario the OP propouses) are hughe monetary undertakings. FF VII as it's time of release was the most expensive game ever.

You brought the "provided it sell" conditioning to the eventual case of SuareSoft ports in times were they were confortable with the budget for exclusive console games. i provided you storical evidence for this.

The Xbox ended up having it's fair share of Japanese ports of franchizes popular in Sony's systems. Silent Hills, Metal Gears, Soul Calibur, etc.

The world size and draw distance were more of a limitation of the PSone. Soul Reaver demonstrated that CD's could stream large worlds without loading. So Zelda or Banjo would've certainly been possible without either being impacted negatively.

im not disputting those things you claim exactly. What im telling you, is that there's no area in Sould Reaver that has the draw distances you see in Banjo or Zelda. There was alot of fade in in Soul Reaver.

 

[KojiKnight]

Nintendo were looking into CD's with the SNES. I think they would have worked something out if they were going to make a whole console with it.

Read the posts in this thread, many people are just assuming it would be the N64 with a CD-ROM drive, such a system would not have existed because of the cost. A nintendo system with a CD-rom drive at the time would have likely been very similar hardware wise to the PS1. It wouldn't likely have tech like hardware bilinear filtering, or the super beefy CPU. Games like Ocarina of Time wouldn't have been possible, not because of CD-rom loading, but rather because the real beefy hardware wouldn't be there.

 

[JordanN]

This is not helping your argument. Mainline Final Fantasy games (an important part of the scenario the OP propouses) are hughe monetary undertakings. FF VIII as it's time of release was the most expensive game ever.

You brought the "provided it sell" conditioning to the eventual case of SuareSoft ports in times were they were confortable with the budget for exclusive console games. i provided you storical evidence for this.

The Xbox ended up having it's fair share of Japanese ports of franchizes popular in Sony's systems. Silent Hills, Metal Gears, Soul Calibur, etc.

I didn't say porting was definitive. I was giving reasons why I think porting/working on more than one platform would be possible.

"Provided it sell" was a response to why do you think Square staying Nintendo only would reap them the most money if another platform could still guarantee them easy sales at less cost?

 

[DonMigs85]

Yeah, Nintendo would have likely had to sell the console at a loss, which they hate to do if they put in a CD-ROM drive. I mean they were already too cheap to just put in 8MB RDRAM from the start.

 

[Ricky 7]

PS1 probably would have been Sony's last console.

 

[JordanN]

Yeah, Nintendo would have likely had to sell the console at a loss, which they hate to do if they put in a CD-ROM drive. I mean they were already too cheap to just put in 8MB RDRAM from the start.

While it's hindsight, selling at a loss would have been 200% better than selling catridges because they cost more to manufacture than disks. Game prices also suffered for using cartridges (n64 games would cost close to $80 when PS1 games were $40).

 

[SeventhSon]

Sony would have made royalties off Nintendo.

 

[Rezae]

Using CDs would have done very little for Nintendo's subpar treatment of 3rd parties and license fees. Some more multi-plats and not as quick of a shift in the industry to Sony, but the results would have played similar IMO. Sony camebat the right time targeting the right demographic with the right attitude towards developers. Nintendo having CD roms doean't change that.

 

[TVC 15]

Read the posts in this thread, many people are just assuming it would be the N64 with a CD-ROM drive, such a system would not have existed because of the cost. A nintendo system with a CD-rom drive at the time would have likely been very similar hardware wise to the PS1. It wouldn't likely have tech like hardware bilinear filtering, or the super beefy CPU. Games like Ocarina of Time wouldn't have been possible, not because of CD-rom loading, but rather because the real beefy hardware wouldn't be there.

Hmm dunno, the N64 was powerful on paper but was terribly wasteful and inefficient in practice, the CPU didn't have DMA to main memory, some iffy memory latency with RDRAM and their was no sound processor neither. The N64 was more feature complete, and no doubt the MIPS CPU was capable of more than the PS1's MIPS, but I'm quite sure hardware a little above PS1 could have managed OOT, perhaps with more RAM.

Nintendos hardware team made a big point about an efficient memory sub-system with the GC to the point they've kind of over-engineered it on the GC-Wii-WiiU at the expense of more CPU grunt and a more ambitious design.

 

[JordanN]

Using CDs would have done very little for Nintendo's subpar treatment of 3rd parties and license fees. Some more multi-plats and not as quick of a shift in the industry to Sony, but the results would have played similar IMO. Sony camebat the right time targeting the right demographic with the right attitude towards developers. Nintendo having CD roms doean't change that.

Having CD's could have made the market share look closer to PS3/360. Nintendo would have fallen but they wouldn't have been made irrelevant like they are now.

Especially in an era where 3D graphics resulted in a lot more games and games studios. Nintendo wouldn't have isolated themselves from an entire market that were use to CD's.

 

[jblank83]

Sony would have made royalties off Nintendo.

They would have made royalties and they would have controlled licensing. In effect, Nintendo would have been a 2nd party developer to their own console, with Sony controlling the hardware and external licensing.

 

[Refreshment.01]

I didn't say porting was definitive. I was giving reasons why I think porting/working on more than one platform would be possible.

"Provided it sell" was a response to why do you think Square staying Nintendo only would reap them the most money if another platform could still guarantee them easy sales at less cost?

Of course we are both making hyphotesis here. Yet, your reasons are not strong enough to solidify your claims.

SquareSoft did have viable platforms to spread their releases during the 4th, 5th and 6th generations of home consoles yet they remained exclusive. A N64 with the right format choice allowing access to cheaper less limiting media and warranting a better market positioning would have made a harder case for SquareSoft to abandon their comfort zone and go for multiplatform releases. It just goes against their historical trends.

 

[lazygecko]

Looking at things from a more technical standpoint rather than financial, would a CD storage actually have been more detrimental for certain games like Factor 5 made ones? Since I read about them using certain techniques that essentially turned the cartridges into extra virtual memory to help the performance/presentation of their games.

"Provided they sell". That's a big IF, the Xbox was a lot easier to develop for and more powerful than PS2, it was a system with good reception in North America and it never received a main Final Fantasy port.

The Sega Genesis was quite succesful in North America and Europe. It didn't have any FF ports.

The relevance of Japanese RPGs in the international market has become somewhat overstated since it seems the 16-bit ones retroactively became much more popular than they ever were previously, thanks to the boom FF7 made later in the 90's. No Final Fantasy ever went platinum outside Japan.

 

[The Spoony Hou]

Based on what? This seems entirely like sticking a finger in the air.

Soul Reaver has a number of huge environments too, and does some other very impressive things with real time geometry transform.

Well, Miyamoto said Ocarina wouldn't be possible on CDs. I'm sure it would be a different game, maybe just as good though. In any way, I can only go by what he said.

 

[AmFreak]

Yeah, No

When the N64 launched in Japan the PS1 was at ~6 million shipped, when it launched in the US it was at ~7.5 million when it launched in Europe it was at ~13 million.
One year later it was at ~33 million units.
That means that Sony shipped the lifetime sales of the N64 1 year after it (the N64) launched in Europe.

Nintendo barely beat Sega, they probably even lost in the biggest market (US) to them.
And you think the only thing that was needed to beat Sony was a CD-Rom drive?
Sony, a company that completly destroyed Sega's marketshare, cause they were basically Sega, only even cooler and with comparable endless pockets?

 

[Jburton]

Not really.

They had a succesful story in Nintendo consoles.

A CD Rom based N64 would have ruined Sony's party.

Sony have had good lucky strikes the times they have become market leaders. For example, Nintendo opting for cardtridge based media or MS failed plans and incorrect prioritization of features for the 8th gen consoles.

Yeah, it was only due to luck smh.

 

[TAJ]

Read the posts in this thread, many people are just assuming it would be the N64 with a CD-ROM drive, such a system would not have existed because of the cost. A nintendo system with a CD-rom drive at the time would have likely been very similar hardware wise to the PS1. It wouldn't likely have tech like hardware bilinear filtering, or the super beefy CPU. Games like Ocarina of Time wouldn't have been possible, not because of CD-rom loading, but rather because the real beefy hardware wouldn't be there.

I just found a 4X CD-ROM drive for $55 in late '96. That's at a store for one drive, not wholesale or bulk.
Playstation had a 2X.

 

[Loofy]

Gross. A 'Now Loading' screen would have ruined Nintendos games.

 

[Zee-Row]

I always wondered why Square or Enix never supported Sega. Enix only made one game for the Saturn.

 

[Canis lupus]

People think cart ridges was the only problem N64 had? It was 2 years too late. By then PS1 already sold as much as N64 would sell in its entire lifetime.

 

[ViperVisor]

The 2 delays also hurt the N64. The 3rd party developers couldn't sit by twiddling their thumbs.

 

[JordanN]

Edit: Misread your post. i don't think Nintendo was going to win.

 

[Zee-Row]

What was the main reason N64 was delayed so much? Did Nintendo have trouble finalizing the specs?

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

"Provided they sell". That's a big IF, the Xbox was a lot easier to develop for and more powerful than PS2, it was a system with good reception in North America and it never received a main Final Fantasy port.

The Sega Genesis was quite succesful in North America and Europe. It didn't have any FF ports.

SquareSoft is a company that likes to work in their confort zone. When the Nintendo systems were enough for their needs they remained there withouth pursuing other opportunities. Same for PS systems when Nintendo lost the format wars. Not until the budgets for development skyrocketed beyond their capacity, porting was considered.

Not saying you are wrong... but the draw distances and area sizes in Soul Reaver are not comparable to the enormous stuff you see in games like Zelda or Banjo. Ceratinly not even close to something like Majora.

It's impressive, considering there's no loading screens and the fact you can morph the scenarios.

Well, Miyamoto said Ocarina wouldn't be possible on CDs. I'm sure it would be a different game, maybe just as good though. In any way, I can only go by what he said.

And I'm sure when Ubi says that the reason Unite is 900p because of the CPU on PS4 is also true.

Because, you know, PR bullshit talk from Nintendo is impossible.

 

[jblank83]

Aside from holding more data, CD media also meant cheaper production costs.

Half the reason 3rd parties were upset with Nintendo was that Nintendo tightly controlled the final step in game production: selling official cartridges at high prices. Half the reason 3rd parties were so happy with Playstation is that buying CD media was far cheaper, and that meant either MSRP could be more attractive (which is why so many PS1 games were $39.99 or less versus N64 prices of $49.99 to $59.99) or they could garner more profit.

Sony also licensed development at a much cheaper fee than Nintendo.

 

[big_z]

there was a cd version of the n64 as well as a cd add-on being tested quite late in the n64 hardware development. Nintendo claims they went with carts in the end because the games they wanted to make would only work on that format but that's PR bullshit. Nintendo wanted full control over manufacturing and royalties and they could only get that with carts.

the smartest thing Nintendo could have done is make the n64 cd based but have a combined cart/ram expansion slot as well. would have opened up a lot of possibilities and let developers choose which format to use.

as for square there was a lot of money, reduced royalties, etc. going on by sony to get them to jump ship. if sony released the ps1 in this alternate universe I think square would have still moved to playstation.

 

[7DollarHagane]

Its important to remember that at the time when the n64 hardware was in development the applications of console CD technology were the Sega CD, the cd-i, the laseractive, and the 3do.

With the kind of steaming shit that was being done on those platforms with fmv, largely non interactive "games" and games that benefitted only from improved audio, its not hard to understand why yamauchi did not want to use CDs.

Not to mention at the time that CD drives were expensive, had high failure rates, and poor copy protection, and the media was fragile, it all went against Nintendo's priorities.

There also was the lucrative licensing and cartridge manufacture aspect of their business. Its greedy but they were a business.

It was the wrong decision in hindsight but there were real reasons for not going with cd for n64.

The real facepalm decision with the n64 is the almost total absence of sound hardware and the poor amount of vram for textures.

 

[The Spoony Hou]

And I'm sure when Ubi says that the reason Unite is 900p because of the CPU on PS4 is also true.

Because, you know, PR bullshit talk from Nintendo is impossible.

I don't think Miyamoto is used to making purely PR statements, but I could be wrong. If it was Reggie Id never have mentioned it, though. Miyamoto developed the game, he knows it's inner workings better than most people. In the absense of better evidence I'll go by his word.

And again, ignoring whta he said, I'm sure the game would be different on CDs.

 

[iidesuyo]

If the N64 had a CD-Rom drive, it would have cost $150-200 more (cost of CD-rom drive + additional memory to make up for the slower medium read/seek speeds) and would have become another 3DO and likely ended up selling far worse as a result.

Do you have any source? I cannot believe that a simple 2x CD-ROM drive would have made the N64 a whole 100$ more expensive in 1996.

 

[EctoPrime]

A dual cart and cd system could of worked as the low capacity cart (2MB,4MB) would function as a drm key making any pirated discs worthless and at the same time giving developers more space and quick access to some data. Nintendo could just make cart only games.

Pretty much like King of Fighters 95 on Saturn but with an actual cartridge port not some fiddly expansion socket that the Sega console had.

 

[Renekton]

What was the production cost of a CD drive back around that time?

 

[PdotMichael]

Gross. A 'Now Loading' screen would have ruined Nintendos games.

So all post N64 Nintendo games are unplayable for you?

 

[TouchMyBox]

All your most beloved games would be plagued with this:

He's talking about the N64 though.

 

[Parmenides]

Nintendo has made two critical mistakes :

1) N64 used cartridges instead of CDs

2) Nintendo grossly overestimated the Wii sales potential --> Iwata: Wii could beat PS2's sales record (Feb 2009) (coincidentally, Xbox 360 will overtake the Wii in the US over the coming weeks)


Forbes (9/19/1997)

-“Sony is very attractive to the third-party developers, because of the medium the company uses–CD-ROMs.” says IDC analyst William Zinsmeister.

- CDs are preferred by developers for a variety of reasons. For starters, a CD can hold up to 650 megabytes of data, while a cartridge’s storage capacity is only 16 megabytes.

- Nintendo makes these cartridges in Japan and it takes about three months for developers to lay their hands on the blanks, which means the game developers have to second-guess the demand and run the risk of making a costly mistake. Blank cartridges sell for around $35, while blank CDs sell for about $6.

- Wrong forecasts may leave developers with either huge excess inventories or not enough copies of a hot title. In comparison, CDs have a turnaround time of less than two weeks. “CDs give higher margins to third-party developers, one of the main reasons they are attracted to the Sony PlayStation platform,” adds IDC’s Zinsmeister.

-a cheaper medium, gives Sony a price advantage. The company can sell PlayStation games for about $35 in retail outlets, while Nintendo games are in the $75 price range thus limiting sales.

-Result: there are about 300 games available for the PlayStation, Nintendo will be lucky to have 45.

EA (8/11/1998)

-the Company's agreement with Nintendo for N64 products requires prepayment of costly cartridge-based inventory, minimum orders and no rights of return.

-Under the terms of the N64 Agreement, the Company engages Nintendo to manufacture its N64 cartridges for distribution by the Company. Accordingly, the Company has little ability to control its supply of N64 cartridges or the timing of their delivery. A shortage of microchips or other factors outside the control of the Company could impair the Company's ability to obtain an adequate supply of cartridges.

-In connection with the Company's purchases of N64 cartridges for distribution in North America, Nintendo requires the Company to provide irrevocable letters of credit prior to Nintendo's acceptance of purchase orders from the Company for purchases of these cartridges. For purchases of N64 cartridges for distribution in Japan and Europe, Nintendo requires the Company to make cash deposits. Furthermore, Nintendo maintains a policy of not accepting returns of N64 cartidges.

-Because of these and other factors, the carrying of an inventory of cartridges entails significant capital and risk.

 

[Jobbs]

 

[Cipherr]

To this day I hate loading screens. It why I love the hell out of SSD growth that finally starts to put a dent in them on PC's. Those 10k rpm mech drives back in the day NEVER cut it. Slow ass shit.

 

[nephilimdj]

What was the production cost of a CD drive back around that time?

You could buy one of those cheap Discman clones from panasonic and other companies for 100-130

I had friends at school with the VCD addon for their PSX, people tend to forget how crazy the CD craze was, people were willing to pay premium for it

 

[FreedomFighter]

If N64 were CD-based, Nintendo would've won that gen easily and the PlayStation wouldn't have been as great a success.

 

[pinkurocket]

Sony might not have succeeded like they did, and might not have continued with the PS2. Nintendo would have remained king and never would have gone after the adult market like Sony did.

I shudder to think of an industry where Nintendo is the main leader. Gross.

Nintendo did release Majora's Mask on N64 though. If they remained leader, I wouldn't put it past them to experiment more with darker themes and be less reliant on their well-known IPs (AKA all dem Marios).

Also remember that they went so casual with DS and Wii because they needed a new strategy after the Gamecube slacking behind. Tapping into the casual market was a way for them to get ahead of the game again. Perhaps this wouldn't have happened if they remained leader since they wouldn't have to change their winning formula.