CD wouldn't have made N64 a huge success.

i think there would have been big history changes. Square wouldnt have left Nintendo and the FFVII hit would have changed the market to some extent. Several games dropped the n64 court due to its very limited memory.Metal gear would have had a better chance in landing in Nintendo for instance.Voice files were a big strain in the nintendo 64 cartridges.

SNES CD wouldnt have been a mess, but N64 would have been a different story.

Yup. More likely if Nintendo stuck with CD esp being the market leader at that time Sony and the PS1 would have fallen on the wayside of other electronic company failure consoles or at best had minor success but no where near the mega hit it became.

Very few PS1 games actually exceed, say, N64 cart memory of 64MB if we rip prerendered movies out of them. And those that exceed could be easily compressed (audio, textures etc) into one, compare it to modern-day Blu-ray versus DVD, for example. The real issue was manufacturing price of N64 cart and hype of new CD technology regardless of actual benefits for games (not sure if prerendered movies is such a big achievement in gaming). Of course, there're dozens of other issues that make PS1 a success, but N64 cart memory limitations have very little to do with that, to a great extent it's a myth that was created by PR at the time and lived to this day.

I think even if they'd used the 64DD in the base unit from day one (rather than or in addition to carts), N64 likely would've kept the lion's share of Japanese 3rd party support.  The cart medium was definitely it's downfall, and due to price.  It's was the straw that broke the camel's back, after Nintendo's history of horrible 3rd party relations.

Personally, I'd say Nintendo's a better company today for it.  They'll always remember N64, and fear something similar happening again.

Prerendered movies ARE part of the game so you shouldn't count them out. If FF VII would have been released on N64 without prerendered movies as on PS1 with them, N64 version would have failed miserably and wouldn't have helped N64 at all. Prerendered movies were big part of charm of FF VII and several other games so N64 would have been seriously gimped.

It's easy, use game engine to make cutscenes. Since N64 geometry and textures are far ahead of PS1's the difference wouldn't have been so drastic. Though 15 years later all these graphics technologies (both real-time and prerendered) look absoulutely outdated for me with little to no difference, but for contemporaries of N64 and PS1 it probably might look differently =)

nope, back them all consoles used CGIS because they couldnt compete with those graphics. That helped the PS a lot, being able to liberally use good looking CGIs(at least for its time) rather than ingame cutscenes.Using real anime-computer cutscenes back then*hell still today* for instance are eye catchers that you want to have sometimes.And the difference was not drastic, it was inmense back then.In fact, back then CGI was a big new cool thing to have in consoles.N64 couldnt afford to fit that and developers knew it.

The other reason why memory does matter is that , you said it yourself, there would have to use additional compressing techniques-coupled with the well known difficulties of programming for N64 to make a game fit. If you add that together, you are less compelled to do it. Why going through the trouble of compressing and managing memory, space, sound, and losing CGI availiability if you could do it easier elsewhere?memory did matter big time, among other reasons such as production costs.

Oh god, so much talk about nothing. My point is... the issue for the most part was the manufacturing cost of N64 cart, not memory limitations. Dixi.

PS: If game makes no sense without prerendered cutscenese it's a bad game, e.g. FF7. I wondered at the time how anyone older than 14 could watch all these and didn't feel disgusted or at least bored =) Absolutely horrible game.

You're focusing too much on just one thing:  Memory size of N64 game cartridges.  I remember this generation pretty well, and Nintendo focusing on cartridges was the singular decision that cost them the generation.  Many of you might be too young to realize just what an impact Final Fantasy VII had.  For a while, it was the de facto reason to own a Playstation.  The announcement that FFVII had left the N64 to the Playstation pretty much put that system on the map.  I saw long-time Nintendo and Sega fans turn up their noses at Nintendo in favor of Sony simply because of that one game.  Memory size of the cartridges has a lot to do with it, but so does manufactering costs, order delays, and how much the games cost at retail.  Square even cited the lack of memory in N64 cartridges--and keep in mind, their max size of 512 megabits (or 64 Megabytes) wasn't realized until the latter half of the console's lifespan.  If I remember correctly, Super Mario 64 was on a cartridge only twice the size of Donkey Kong Country on the SNES.  That's miniscule, that's 64 megabits.  Memory was a huge issue. 

Many RPG's of the generation also spanned several discs on the Playstation.  You couldn't do that on the N64.  Because developers were limited to one cartridge with very little storage space.  With CD's, it was virtually limitless.  No reason to downgrade or compress everything, no reason to cut corners or remove content to cram it onto an N64 cart--essentially, the restrictions were far fewer.  The N64 was already hard enough to develop for (and the Saturn was worse), so why work on a harder system if you don't have the space or freedom to develop?  And then, there's no guarantee you'll get the right amount of product on store shelves in time since pressing carts took far longer and cost far more than burning a few more CD's. 

Had Nintendo been smart--and used CD's, they would have dominated the generation quite easily.  How do I know?  People had largely abandoned Sega.  There were three 32-bit consoles competing, often, on fairly equal levels at the time--the 3DO, Saturn, and Playstation.  Had Nintendo come out with a 64-bit, CD-based system, they not only would have kept Square and damn near every other developer, but they would have been able to show a powerful edge in the industry.  And a machine with both Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII would have been legendary in its popularity.  On top of this, the N64 set truly impressive sales records upon it's launch (later broken by the ill-fated Dreamcast).  If the N64 had been a CD-based system, it would have had a steady stream of popular titles from quality developers right from the start, and it's momentum would never have dropped as it did. 

At the time, simply the announcement that Final Fantasy VII (among some other less heavy-duty titles) moving from Nintendo to Sony was enough to get people buying the Playstation--up to a full year before FFVII launched.  Back when it was still known in the West as Final Fantasy IV.  One of my best friends in high school gave the system extra attention when he heard of Square's move.  It didn't help things that Sega had so painfully ruined themselves that when the Playstation came out, the Saturn was made irrelevant almost overnight. 

On the one hand, some people have a point, that it wasn't just CD's that made the N64 the silver medal winner to Sony's gold.  But that was the primary cause, and storage space and cost of CD's was the primary reason people abandoned Nintendo for Sony--mostly starting with Square's departure.  It didn't matter if some Playstation games were essentially the same size as the largest N64 games--developers only cared about having the space and it being available cheaply.  Nintendo went with carts, Square went with Sony, and a cascade effect eventually put Sony far, far into the lead.  Sony would have easily trumped Sega at the time, but if the N64 had used CD's--they never would have trumped Nintendo.  They probably wouldn't have even come close.