Carts. The laser drivers of the past were not robust enough. And nothing beats the feel of introducing a cart in the console.

+more longevity, harder to screw up a set of contacts than a disc drive.

Pretty much the above.

Cartridges. But the N64 is the best example on how it was done wrong.

On portables, carts for sure. The idea of a disc-based portable is a stone cold turn off man. It's the main reason I never bought a PSP. The only Sony system I never owned. On home systems, blu-rays are still the best physical format. Carts are not practical. The cost difference, while not as large as it once was, is still noteworthy, and until I see a cart on a modern system that holds 50gb of data, disks win. It just goes onto the hdd now anyways.....

Then I'll download it.

Whatever the systems I play on use for their games. Carts are probably the better option on portable systems while discs work better on home consoles since they can hold more data, but ultimately there really isn't much of a difference for me.

Prefer cartridges, but discs are better atm, cheaper and bigger storage.

Carts, I can stack them ten high and they wont scratch, at least not in a way that is likely to harm them, though I guess a contact could be damaged, but this is much less likely than a disc being irreparably damaged due to miss-care.

Cartridges and discs i had issues with both

Cartridge!

Specially the cartriges of the 8 and 16-bit eras where they allowed for co-processors and specialized chipsets that could expand on the base systems capabilities.

But since that doesn't seem to come back the cards or digital. But most importantly no fucking installs on a console!