N64 would have probably won depending if all assumptions are true.

Not that sure.... I think it was also a lot of Cash that made Square decide to release FFVII on PSX...

We can speculate about the N64 all day but in the end, we're overlooking the REAL question:  What if it snowed in San Francisco?

Can't believe I used to own this turd of a PS2 game.  I think I still do.  No idea what made me buy it.

If the N64 had CDs instead of cartridges, all those shitty Final Fantasy games would have been released for Nintendo platforms instead of Sony and MS platforms.

N64 would've won that generation, probably fairly easily at that and Squaresoft likely would not have defected.

Mario 64 + GoldenEye + Zelda: Oot + Final Fantasy VII + Resident Evil series (multi-plat)? Etc. etc. etc.

Game over for anyone else. They could have still used cartridges for certain Nintendo games ... the Saturn had both a cartridge slot and CD drive for example. It didn't have to be a one or other choice. 

The system would've probably been $50 more expensive at launch, but the games would've been cheaper too, so I think most consumers would take that trade off. 

Nintendo would have dominated the generation if they went with disks instead of cartridges. The major issue with cartridges were that they were very small in space, a CD could hold many times more data which could be used for FMV, music, backgrounds, etc... As a result of not having that space, most games simply were not possible on N64.

The irony about the whole rendered graphic situation that gave CDs the advantage, is that it was Nintendo who demonstrated that games with rendered graphics could win a generation. Nintendo first started using them with Rare on DKC. Immediately after Square began experimenting using them, although only Super Mario RPG got translated to English - this is the direction they went with Final Fantasy VII, and it is also why they couldn't release it on the N64.

If Final Fantasy 7 had come out for N64, so too would have all of Square's games, and it is highly probable that Enix and Capcom would have remained onboard with Nintendo.

I may be too young to remember, but wasn't PlayStation all about that gaming is cool and not something only 5 year olds does? Wasn't that a reason why gaming expanded too, because more people who'd grown up also saw that gaming could be for them.

So I don't know if Nintendo would have won in this case, but I guess FF7 would have stayed on the N64. At least that much would happen, and also... loading times.

Sega Genesis did that as well yet it still lost to Nintendo.

Cartridges were only 1 of the mistakes Nintendo did with the N64.

Their stubbornness regarding controll over third parties, allowing only selected ones to develop for their console, caused a lot of damage too.

The battle would have been a lot closer, yes, but I don't know if Nintendo would have won.

I don't think it was the main problem of the N64.
- It didn't get enough support from 3rd party. Saturn had CD and didn't get so much either. The main reason is that Sony was very friendly to 3rd party and hardware very simple to code for.
- it would still have been launched too late.
- Sony really had a cool image, while Nintendo was somewhat for kids or outdated (talking in term of image)
Anyway Nintendo managed in term of games, sales and profit. But I dont think it would have been so different.