Alternate history: N64 goes with CDs instead of cartridges

[DonFerrari]

curl-6 said:

DonFerrari said:

So we want to believe Nintendo had a great relationship with 3rd party at the same time worried about unlicensed SW they may have put? That is above paranoia. Even great non-Nintendo games didn't sold as great as Nintendo, so an unlicensed game would probably earn peanuts (unless you are talking about shovelwares damaging the image of the system). NES had those shovelwares without Nintendo seal and public could differentiate from the ones with seal.

Unlicensed NES games wouldn't have been such a prevalent thing if there was no money to be made from it. I'm not saying this was a leading reason for them sticking with carts, it was just one of many factors.

Nintendo's relationship with third parties was strong enough that even with Sega offering a competitive alternative with the Megadrive, SNES still got top-shelf third party support with the biggest third party games of the generation like Final Fantasy, Street Fighter II, and Dragon Quest. There's no reason for that to change if they went with CDs for N64.

Time, attrition and continued strain can change everything.

Sure unlicensed NES games would only happen because there were money to be made (which doesn't mean it was made), as much as HW piracy was quite common for it as well (in Brazil there were plenty more non-Nintendo NES than otherwise).

Plus the idea Sega had with the CD was exactly to combat piracy, because at the time the CD manufacturing structure was much more expensive than for cartrdige (at least that is what I heard).