For a cheapskate like me the N64 was awesome here in the UK. They launched at £250 a ridiculous price which annoyed a lot of people and it had some huge reduction to £150 I think pretty quickly. It didn't seem to take long before the console was seen for less than £100 and some of the cartridge games got heavily discounted very quickly. I remember buying many cartridge games for around £10 or less. Loved the system and the games and the value was amazing. TV output quality was poor though.

The Sega Saturn was also a dead man walking console with similar discounting.

The trendy people all had their Playstations which I did get but was late to the party as the N64 kept me so busy. By the time I got to have my own Playstation the games were super cheap for that too. Not that I bought many games for the playstation cough...

I'm not sure a cd drive would have saved the N64 because at the time it was more about Sony's brilliant marketing that sold their console. Sticking a cd drive in the n64 would have meant not only the cost of the cd drive but perhaps a few more upgrades here and there. Also here in the uk the N64 only really had composite and s-video output support but the playstation had full RGB output which meant when you went into a game store the playstation graphics looked vivid and amazing and the N64 looked dull and low resolution. You could walk in planning to buy a N64 and walk out with a playstation such was the difference. That was my experience anyway.

Nintendo didn't screw Sony. Sony wanted nearly all control and profits. After the PS project with Nintendo it basically was canned. Ken wanted to keep it alive but the final product is using the specs SEGA of America proposed to Sony. Had Nintendo used Discs and Saturn was not so poorly designed PS1 would have been a footnote inhistory. PS1 only had success because SEGA made a system impossible to develop for and N64 used carts. PS4 became a success out of the gate because MS and Nintendo messed up not much more to it than that.

PS4 had a pretty weak launch. The hardware was not that disimilar than XBO as a whole,PS4 better ram sure but XBO better CPU but still very similar. XBO had a better launch lineup..hell the Wii U did. The system doesn't do much of anything to standout as hardware. The launch games were pretty weak. Wii U was a mess in every way and MS screwed that presentation so badly and the new policies. Sony didn't have to do much of anything but show up. Hey I like my PS4 don't get me wrong but not like it did anything special. I mean PSN is still a joke and still down a lot with the worst security on the planet. I am a PS+ subscriber btw. Sony is good at marketing,damn good.

Selective memory much? Rewritten history? What's your deal?

"We had the Sony guys and our engineers in the United States come up with specs for what this next optical-based hardware system would be. And with these specs, Olafsson, Schulhof and I went to Japan, and we met with Sony’s Ken Kutaragi. He said it was a great idea, and as we all lose money on hardware, let's jointly market a single system – the Sega/Sony hardware system – and whatever loss we make, we split that loss."

Sega of America didn't come up with the specs alone. 

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/sega-and-sony-almost-teamed-up-on-a-console

For some reason, your comments read more like hate pieces against Sony than anything factual. You make it clear that you can't possibly think Sony has any merit of their own, and the only reason they succeed is because the others messed up... 

actually from what I've read about the Nintendo 64 is that Nintendo made the N64 deliberately hard to program for in order discourage shovelware developers.

This is such a lame what if scenario, its been discussed a million times on this site. Come up with some new and original ones.

Nintendo with discs huh? Well there is one thing that is probably worth pointing out then.

During the NX rumor mill, I heard quite frequently that a possible boost to the device either using cartridges, or being digital only during that brief period that rumor was about, is that disc reading eats up a sizeable part of the console's interior space.

Assuming a similar designed system size wise, that would mean that the 64 would have had less space inside of it to devote to other things, like power.

The 64 was considered the strongest system during the Gen 5 wars. Taking a disc could easily have left the thing weaker than it was in real life, which would have affected the quality of the 1st party titles.

Add in Sony being in general being more socially able, and the 64 would probably have sold more, but in the end games like Ocarina and Star Fox would probably be weaker than they were in our timeline.

Maybe?

I assume your definition of success is its sales numbers when compared to Playstations and SNES.

We know 3rd parties were already pissed at Nintendo, so given the promise of Sony's new entry, they were likely moving away from Nintendo anyways.

Had Nintendo moved to the cheaper disc solution, then it is possible some 3rd parties may have not risked a new platform (Sony) over the proven Nintendo line.

This also ignores that even if Nintendo used discs, Sony also has always allowed media playback, in this case CD music. Nintendo has never allowed this.

Lastly, this ignores any 1st party games that were big hits for Sony, but SEGA always had big hits too and that didn't compare to a combination of Nintendo 1st party and nearly all 3rd party on a single system.

I guess it goes back to 'maybe' for me. At this time Nintendo's model was same as MSony now. High end platform with all games. But I don't think Nintendo would have retained all 3rd party support due to their licensing model. To me that was a bigger factor than cost of carts.

If only Nintendo came out with disc drive attachment for the N64, maybe call it the N64DD?

WH-WHATTTT?!?! It actually exists?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64DD

They put it out in Japan and released 10 games for it. It flopped, hard. It was supposed to come state-side but they pulled the plug on it in the last minute due to poor sales.

In fact, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was originally developed as an N64DD title, and they had to cut a lot of the content because the game would not fit on a regular N64 cartridge.

I know, not totally the same as supporting CD roms from the get-go, but Nintendo did actually pursue this, and it didn't go too well.

This all the way. Not making your console developer-friendly and therefore, denying your consumers a multitude of AAA marquee titles? It absolutely hurt them. By about 70 million unit sales. A similar situation happened with the Gamecube and its mini-disc format, although that system strangely had good third-party support.