[QUOTE="doubutsuteki"]And, sure, the PlayStation wasn't the first CD-ROM-based console - but it was the first to be more successful than the most popular cartridge-based consoles. In the case of CD-ROMs suppleanting cartridges: it was inevitable. It was probably the only way forward at that point. But again, the reason was that Sony had already been involved with Nintendo since years in order to bring CD-ROM-technology to the SNES - so when Nintendo pulled out of their partnership, it wasn't unreasonable for Sony to use that technology to make the PlayStation; it was all circumstances relating to business and the rivalry that goes with it, not that Nintendo didn't want to go with CD-ROM:s - everyone else that tried to enter the competition with Nintendo went with CD-ROM, including their main rival, Sega. Perhaps the failure of the Mega-CD had some impact on the design of the Nintendo 64 - and I do think that the failure of Sega has had an impact on Nintendo's design choices since then, as they've gone from being the video game company among a dozen of challengers, to one among two other well established giants. Their strategy for survival in this age has turned out to be the opposite of that of their former main competitor, Sega: Rather than incorporating the best technology and getting it out there before anyone else, they have, I think, begun to look at themselves and what they can offer, the answer after decades of successful first-party games, is software. Their excuse for being in the console market when their competitors obviously have better hardware, and have huge resources to boot - remember that Microsoft made big losses entering the market with the Xbox in the beginning - is their focus on integrating the game experience more closely with the console that they have - how successful they've been in this regard is a matter of debate, in the business sense they've been very successful. And so Kinect and Move appeared...Domino_slayer
I'd imagine the main reason for the N64 being cartridge based was due to control
Back in the 80s Nintendo were the only company allowed to officially manufacture NES/Famicom games, all 3rd parties had to send titles to them for approval to be manufactured, which meant that Nintendo had final say over what types of content would be allowed, how many units would be allocated, and when the game would be released (all within reason obviously), it also meant that Nintendo could make unreasonable demands (for instance titles appearing on NES had to be console exclusive for 2 years)
Nintendo had to be paid a royalty by 3rd parties, and Nintendo also charged double the cost for manufacturing the cartridges, so they actually made both a royalty profit, and a manufacturing profit. Because Nintendo charged double for manufacturing, they could actually make cartridge sizes which were double that of their competitors for the same price, meaning that their games always had an advantage over 3rd party titles, for 3rd parties to make similar size games their titles would either have to be more expensive, or have lower profit margins.
Savvy 3rd parties could manufacture their own cartridges, but this took expertise as it required them to bypass the Nintendo lock-out chip in a manner which didn't infringe on any of Nintendo's copyrights so only a handfull of companies were able to do this.
Nintendo carried this on with the SNES, but had to relax on certain policies both due to a combination of legal pressure (the exclusivity agreements), and competition pressure (the censorship was making it difficult for them to compete with Mega Drive)
Essentially Nintendo's huge videogame empire was built on control, CDs were easy to manufacture and difficult to control so its easy to see why Nintendo may have been unwilling to jump into CDs
Obviously on top of that there are other benefits with going with cartridges to take into account though, piracy for instance is easier with CDs, and not to forget at the time CD drives added significantly to hardware cost, if the N64 had been released with a CD drive it would've been the most expensive console on the market at launch, at ~$100 more expensive than both PS1 and Saturn during that time.
Maybe. But CD-burners were still quite expensive then - although they became affordable by the end of the 90s. Of course, just a few years earlier when Nintendo and Sega partnered to make a CD-addon for the SNES the piracy question cannot possibly have been as relevant as it may have been when Nintendo were designing the N64. Though, I haven't considered the control aspects of cartridge manufacturing either in relation to the N64: it seems to me as if they should have understood that they would unavoidably lose some third party support to Sony, and that leaving cartridges behind was the only way forward in the long run. Perhaps they were too full of themselves, too unwilling to listen to the competition, after the successes of the NES and the SNES - kinda like how Atari were confident in their time that whatever they put out, people would buy. So, yeah, I think you have a point there. It may be the biggest mistake Nintendo ever made. Sure, the N64 was already going to be the most advanced console for it's generation, so adding a CD-ROM to it may have made it significantly more expensive than the PlayStation and the Saturn, and Nintendo thought that they would be able to hold their ground well with what they had - it turned out not to be how to control the market at that point though, even if it meant tighter control of their own shrinking segment of it.
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