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Soundwave on 26 September 2015
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Magnus said:
Soundwave said:

64DD was a huge mistake. They could've still salvaged that gen had they ditched that and went for a CD-ROM add-on.

The issue wasn't the vendors, I'm sure Philips would've been happy to give them CD drives, and if not them probably 10 other vendors.

The issue with CD is I think Miyamoto and several others at Nintendo hated the format and they twisted Yamauchi's arm on it, but in doing so they basically handed the console market on a silver platter to Sony. That's why game designers should not be making business decisions. 

I doubt loading times were an issue since that was a problem with the 64DD as well, as evidenced by the Ocarina of Time Iwata Asks.


I was following the game industry at that time, I remember Miyamoto would always sh*t on CDs and loading times. IMO he was the driving force behind the decision not to use CD. 

We'll probably never know who actually made the call, but I have a strong feeling Miyamoto was heavily involved in the decision. Not going to say no to the guy who invented Mario, even though you probably should. 

I remember very vividly, this was even in the days before the internet, lol, I'd go to a book store to check out all the game magazines (EGM, Game Pro, GamePlayers, etc.) and I remember it read that Nintendo had decided not to use CD-ROM for the N64, and I remember in the pit of my stomach this feeling of "uh oh, this is probably not good". I remember have to re-read it to make sure. 

And honestly Nintendo was never the same after that. Before that they used to be what Sony is to the industry now, after that, the whole third party thing fell apart. For people who weren't around then or were young kids ... it wasn't always like this with Nintendo, in fact back in those days Nintendo was synonmous with having the most games and the most variety (due to all their developer support). The NES and SNES were to their day what the Playstation 4 is today. 

A "game drought" on a Nintendo console was unheard of in those days. It was a very different time, I feel bad for younger Nintendo fans who didn't grow up in that era and experience what it was like, it's nothing like what it is today.