DonFerrari said:
Agree with your points. And I didn't say it was the right decision to look at Sega-CD (add-on) and CD-i (a new entrant project) and compare to a new gen system from a dominating power. But people with power of decision that wanted to avoid CD may have used those as excuses to not have CD. We will never know all the details of why they didn't had CD and how much having it would change on cost, performance and sales, but sure it is something that we always wonder. |
The 64DD was another problem too, Nintendo bit hard on magnetic disks being the saving grace to cartridges. I don't think the plan ever was for the N64 to be a cartridge only system. 64DD was supposed to be the solution to many of the N64's problems. For those who don't know this the 64DD and Dragon Quest VII exclusivity for 64DD was basically announced when Nintendo first unveiled the N64 at Space World (Shoshinkai 1995) and the system was clearly designed for the 64DD because having a RAM expansion like it did probably had to have taken some serious engineering time.
I think 64DD was Yamauchi's "solution" to the cartridge problem, but the only thing it actually accomplished was keep Nintendo from accepting the truth that CD-ROM was better. CD-ROM killed magnetic media in general, Iomega Zip Drives were moderately successful in the mid-90s, but even rewritable CD-ROM drives became so cheap so fast that Iomega couldn't compete, even though they desperately tried to up the storage size of their disks as time went on.
I think Yamauchi was so invested in the 64DD that Nintendo basically had to release the 64DD in a tiny launch in Japan to basically save face for him. There's a lot of weird Japanese corporate politics that go into a lot of these decisions.
It is a little odd we still don't know the full story of the fateful fall out of the SNES CD-ROM and N64 cartridge decision ... I suspect this is because it would be embarrassing for some of the people who still work at Nintendo, so maybe one of these days will get the full story on who made what decision but probably not until after all the parties involved are retired. That probably means Mr. Miyamoto. Hopefully one day there will be a book done on this.
To be honest for one, I find Nintendo not just flat out buying a stake in Squaresoft circa 1994/95 to be odd as well. Square was so close to Nintendo, they should have just locked that relationship down ironclad, from a Nintendo enthusiast POV it's such a shame Sony was able to exploit that and create a rift. In the mid-1990s a studio outside of Nintendo being allowed to make a Mario game like Super Mario RPG was a huge honor ... even Rareware wasn't allowed to use Mario by Nintendo. Squaresoft and Final Fantasy used to be completely synonymous with Nintendo.