IGN is biased against Nintendo

[Sullla]

darklich13 said:

Cartridge's Last Stand - While Nintendo saw legitimate gameplay concerns regarding the CD-ROM format, the decision to stick with cartridges was based more in business sense - Nintendo didn't own the CD format, and cartridges would give them greater market control while also limiting problems with piracy. The consequences of this decision were disastrous. Cartridges cost nearly triple the price of CDs to make, and publishers balked at the idea of spending that much money - money that, if the game failed, could not be reclaimed. Cartridge memory also maxed out at a tenth of the space of CD, isolating cinema-addicted developers like Square. While some figured out how to work within the constraints (Angel Studio's port of Resident Evil 2 is a nearly perfect conversion from its PlayStation counterpart), most chose instead to throw cursory support behind the risky, limited format, focusing instead on Sony's system.

Talk about historical revisionism! This is exactly the opposite of the situation that was actually taking place in 1993-94 when these consoles were under development. As everyone should know, the Playstation was far from the first console to use a CD-based format. Every previous system to use disc-based technology was a dismal failure. Sega CD, the 3DO, the CD-i, and so on. Before the successful introduction of the Playstation, it was CDs that were the risky, limited format. Cartridges were seen as the safe choice - exactly the opposite of what this article claims! Now that doesn't change the fact that Nintendo made a huge mistake in sticking with them, but this was by no means a slam-dunk decision at the time. Don't forget that Sega's 32X came out less than a year before the N64, and it used a cartridge format as well. This article is simply very poorly researched.

I don't know why I'm bothering to enter a debate that's over a decade old now... It just irritates me how so many people who weren't around back then make erroneous claims. I'm not talking about you specifically, darklich13, just Internet users in general.