I agree with everyone who said N64 using cartridges. I honestly believe that Nintendo would have easily weathered the Playstation storm if it used CDs. Sony is give a little too much credit when it came to taking down Nintendo and Sega in the 5th gen. Basically, Sony won because they fucked up the least.
Which PS1 games before the N64 set the world on fire? Jumping Flash? Destruction Derby? Twisted Metal? Good games but nothing that could really turn heads. The PS1's greatest games (Crash 1 was good and Gran Turismo was great, though) came at the hands of 3rd parties and many weren't even exclusive. Metal Gear, Castlevania, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, and more--these were the games that made people LOVE the Playstation brand and the only reason they were on Playstation (and many of them were on Saturn) was because they couldn't be done on the N64.
Third parties could pput their games on N64 and pay Nintendo's high price for cartridges, use the small amount of space for textures and audio, and sell their games for $50-$80 or more OR they could use CDs, produce the games cheaply, have a ton of space (if a little less power) to utilize, and sell their titles for $39 or less. Saturn was dead due to Sega's poor relationship with the industry and gamers. Was there even a choice? The PS1 was king by default and the PS2 didn't have to do anything but sit back and not fuck up.
Nintendo killed themselves, not by allowing the PS1 to come into existence, but by allowing it to have such an advantage when it came to software format. Coming to market a year after the competition, they should have known every advantage the PPS1 had and expanded on it. They went their own way and it blew up in their face.
