Started off this poll undecided but after reading through the responses I am definitely leaning more towards a scenario where it plays out much like SNES vs Megadrive just with Sega switched for Sony; some third parties rebel against Nintendo's hegemony and side with Playstation as they did with Megadrive, but Nintendo's established power, unhampered by the crippling ball and chain of cartridges, means it still gets the big guns like Final Fantasy instead of being left high and dry as they historically did.

This is pretty much my thoughts 100%

I think it's worth noting that by the time the Gamecube released, the N64 had sold almost all of the units it was going to sell lifetime. It didn't sell much after it was replaced. Whereas the Sony Playstation ended up selling an additional 28 million units after it was replaced (PS2 launched before PSOne in Japan). It sold so much because it already had a huge library of games and was cheap. When you look at a console that sold 102 million, and compare it to a console that sold 32 million, it's easy to see why it seems implausible that one change could completely twist the outcome of events. That's a 70 million lead. But, without the steps taken early on in the consoles lifespan, I think a lot of those sales disappear, because as I understand it, the appeal was getting a great product that was cheap from what was at the time the biggest gaming brand. Without games like Final Fantasy 7, that brand power goes away, and then it just becomes a cheaper, more distributed console. I think this would have a huge effect on the overall sales. Let alone what effect a CD based N64 would have on the early Playstation's success.

Without Final Fantasy 7 and other prominent franchises flipping, there's no way Sony would have won the gen. NintendI could have still messed up 3rd party relationships with their arrogant approach at the time, but the storage medium was a huge obstacle for many 3rd party devs (which made up the vast majority of "Sony's" hits). Watched a Dreamcast documentary two days ago where a Sega employee commented on how crazy it was that Sony took that gen without contributing hit game of their own - it was the outflow of Square, Capcom, Eidos, and more that made Playstation what it was, rather than Sony leading by example.

Nintendo going Cartridge changed everyone's fortunes.

Cool idea for a thread.

What made me buy a PS1 was FF7. I remember reading about it in Gamepro Magazine and being absolutely amazed by how great it looked. CGI in a videogame was like "holy shit wtf" at the time.

Ignoring the fact that if Nintendo had gone with CDs, that likely would have meant a partnership with Sony (and thus no PS1), I think that things would have been completely different.

Squaresoft would have released FF7 on the N64 and many more third party developers would have followed suit. I think Nintendo lost the gen because they didn't go with CDs.

In 1994 Sony was in partnership with Namco, at the time Namco was an Arcade powerhouse rivaling Sega with spectacular 3D games such as Ridge Racer, Tekken, Soul Edge and Time Crisis. Namco also made its arcade chipsets (System21, System22) based on Playstation hardware. Sony developed many great first party games, thanks to their internal development studios like Polyphony, games like Gran Turismo, Motor Toon GP, Jumping Flash, MediEvil, Arc the Lad, Legend of Dragoon. Several western developers were 2nd party to Sony, so Crash Bandicoot by Naughty Dogs and Spyro by Insomniac would never been released on anything else.

So, even with a N64 CDs, Sony would have had a strong console on the market. In fact, the PSX was somehow a "spiritual successor" to the SNES.

Anyway, a N64 with CDs could have kept Nintendo and Squaresoft together as partners, with Square games available exclusively for the N64! Games such as Final Fantasy 7-8-9, Legend of Mana, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve, Xenogears, Einhander and Tobal.

In this scenario, there would have been a tough battle between the two company, and probably they could have ended up with similar results in terms of sold units, with Nintendo absolutely ahead in Japan while Sony in Europe.

Why do you think that so many companies that were exclusively on the PS1/PS2 jumped ship to the Xbox 360 early on? Why did so many exclusive Xbox 360 franchises jump ship to the PS4? Companies go where the money is.

The SNES lost ground to the Genesis (Sega's second home console) because the Genesis had a huge headstart. People mostly bought one console back then.

The PS3 lost ground to the Xbox 360 (Microsoft's second console) because it had a huge headstart.

With the PS1, Sony was unproven in the home console market and lackluster as a third party company. People actually waited until the N64 came out and initially it was on fire...then, new games started taking forever to come out. PS1 versions had more content. PS1 got tons of exclusives. 

The PS1 was simply the only viable console that could produce the kind of experience that developers wanted to make at the time. Cutscenes, symphony quality music, large worlds, tons of voice acting.

If the N64 could deliver that, and was still twice as powerful, and still only $199 at launch, I just don't see how developers could ignore it. The N64 was a powerful powerful console. More powerful that PCs when it launched (if I'm not mistaken). The Nintendo name was still strong. We can't change history but I think things would have been drastically different.

More powerful than most PCs, certainly. There was 3dfx Voodoo card for PCs (which was better than N64), but it was pure 3D accelerator (going for around $200) and you had to have regular 2D card in addition to display anything. But it was mind blowing at the time seeing Quake running on it.

I just think it is funny that most seem to be taking a very rose glassed alternative reality option. One where Nintendo having CD would make everything right.

Where we could alternatively have a CD on N64, but the rest of the HW because of this decision end up being a Saturn equivalent... See Sega had established brand power, CD, but still couldn't outsell even N64.

So Sony wouldn't just drop all those sales just because CD was available on N64. As put before, GC had DVD and failed even harder than N64 (and at that point Nintendo should bee humbler right?), Wii didn't even try to compete anymore.