Nintendo would have demolished Sony if the N64 used CDs.
The N64 was outselling the Playstation in the US for a good long stretch (through a big part of 1997) with barely any games, if Nintendo had retained most of their SNES-era support by using CD-ROM, Sony would've been toast. The Playstation only got ahead because the game disparity was ridiculously one sided, Playstation had hundreds of games, N64 often times was stuck with like 1 game a month.
GoldenEye 007 was *the* game in the West in that generation IMO, Sony had nothing to match Mario 64 and Zelda: OoT either. Nintendo was just ridiculous in handicapping that system, if had reasonable amounts of games, it would have won in North America at least for sure.