Nintendo What-If?

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Soundwave said:

The decision to use cartridges for the N64 was made in 1993 or early 1994. This was like 4-5 years before CD-ROM piracy actively became a thing and CD-burners weren't available at that time. 

I doubt it had a significant impact on Nintendo's decisions at that time. In 1993, having a computer with just a regular CD-ROM drive was considered all fancy schmancy, lol.

I remember following the N64's development like crazy, in those days I would go to the book store the first day they got a new issue of EGM or GameFan looking for new N64 info. I still remember reading the N64 wouldn't support CD-ROM in that book store all those years ago in early 1994 and this big sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach like "uh oh ... this feels like a massive mistake". I followed every bit of the N64's development. 

Sure enough I don't think Nintendo has ever really recovered from that mistake in the console business. That decision is where everything went wrong for Nintendo, if they had chosen to compromise instead and included CD for third parties and let Miyamoto and his EAD team use cartridges, hell they could have done CD + cartridge combo games too to save on expensive cartridge sizes (game data could be on the cart, orchestral music and FMVs could've been on the CD disc). 

Nintendo of course already had experience with discs, because of Snes CD-ROM. As I said, home piracy wasn't what they were concerned about, but the pirated games made in China and sold at a mall. Cartridges in theory at least are much harder to pirate, as you can have a lockout chip that's hard to copy, instead of just pressing disc images. It has to have been pretty clear at the time that the CD burners will become commodity.

I was very happy with the cartridges, though the audio department suffered from them. N64 design philosophy was so much different than that of Playstations, so the benefit of CD's had been marginal at best - N64 was designed to render everything by engine, as PSX was designed to stream from the disc. 

Even if there had been CD's, the 3rd parties had not developed N64 games, because of the standards Nintendo forced everyone to follow - it wasn't until the Wii Nintendo ditched the quality standards everyone's so bitchy about.