Nintendo savior complex strikes again. They fucked up and Square didn't owe them shit. Move on.

After what Nintendo did to Sony with the CD-drive deal, I don't think they have a moral high ground here.
Besides, FF7 would not have been possible on a cartridge, so it is what it is regardless. It's all connected in a funny way.
Decisions were made and they had consequences.

It's not as black and white as that.

Nintendo and Sony entered into a business venture, whereby they were going to release a joint console. Due to the way Japanese business was done back then, the contract between them wasn't really combed over much by Nintendo until it was nearing completion. When it was, Nintendo discovered that Sony wanted more way rights over their games than Nintendo was willing to accept. It was so egregious, that Nintendo felt betrayed... which started the whole thing off. Nintendo fired back, told them to take a hike, went with another company and then, well... we know the rest.

But it wasn't Nintendo screws over innocent little Sony. It was more complicated than that, made worse by Yamauchi's inner Steve Jobs, cut-throat business style.

Eh Sony wanted pretty much all control over the add on. Both were in the wrong but I don't blame either side for feeling the way they did. 

I agree, but you quoted the wrong dude :P

Nintendo signed the deal with Sony in 1988, you kinda have to remember Nintendo was still a fly by their pants small company that was just making shit up on the fly, they had only really been in the console business for 5 years, that means think about the time from 2021 to today, lol. That's nothing. There was no real blue print to follow either, Atari had some success and had drove the game business into the shitter as well in the span of about 4-5 years. 

Someone screwed up the deal big time, Sony getting licensing fee rights to all CD games was a laughably stupid deal that couldn't be allowed to come to fruition, whoever didn't fully read that contract should have been fired.

Nintendo had to bail on the deal, in hindsight what they should have done is just release the SFC CD-ROM in Japan only (like the 64DD), let it flop, thus getting them off the hook and then locked Sony in to a CD deal for then next 2-3 generations of Nintendo consoles with a non-compete clause, lol. Of course everything is perfect with hindsight. 

Nintendo didn't know what they were doing in the 80s, they were just making shit up as they went. Have a hit game like Super Mario Bros? Just make a sequel that's basically the same exact engine remixed (Super Mario Bros. 2 Japan) ... oops, that didn't work. OK lets do Super Mario Bros. 3 (ding ding ding). They had no idea what they were doing with the Game Boy either and at one point Yamauchi ordered the project cancelled but the team behind it simply didn't listen to him, lol. Totally chaotic environment. 

Sony entered the market to pry all the 3rd parties away from Nintendo and Sega and Square were one of Nintendo's biggest.

FF7 was in the works for Nintendo before the PS1, and Squares legacy would have continued on regardless, however Square decided to take the offer, the offer being something Nintendo could not match. 

This is why Nintendo banned Square and the relationship fell apart. Square was important to Nintendo and Square became big due to Nintendo.

FF7 is one of my favourite PS1 games which I still own to this day but even I can see the betrayal Square did and it wasnt just CD tech, otherwise FF7 would have launched on the Saturn.

I feel it’s being forgotten that it wasn’t just Square that abandoned Nintendo. Namco, Konami, and Capcom also notoriously heavily supported the PS1 either completely or overwhelmingly.

In the end, Nintendo’s stubbornness cost them more than just Square.

It was a dumb mistake. Even if they wanted no to little loading times in game, there were better ways of accomplishing that, the N64 was even setup for RAM expansion. Cartridges are nothing but ROM memory, you could have just included a rewritable ROM cartridge to use as a loading buffer, CD loads data onto the cart and you're good to play for the next 30-120 minutes with no loading. 

The Super NES CD-ROM (the Nintendo one, not the Sony one) already had this design.

Or you could have just integrated extra RAM/ROM onto the chipset itself. 

They should have pivoted even by 1996 when CD-ROM prices were crashing. 

A game like Super Mario 64 could have ran with virtually no loading times even with a 4MB ROM or RAM buffer. It just would've loaded for a few seconds to start the game (which could have even been hidden by Mario running up the castle).

I'm pretty convinced even if N64 had a CD drive Nintendo would have went with a proprietary disc format with a smaller capacity than standard CD-R. My guess is 150MB to maybe 300MB. Vs the standard 650MB CD-R and FF7 took 3 discs. Still leading to Square leaving for PlayStation. Nintendo was so paranoid about piracy. Still are. We saw with Gamecube going miniDVD. Wii did use DVD9 but then Wii U used 25GB discs but no option for dual layer. When PS4 launched some of the larger launch games were 21 ish GB. Wii U's largest game came in 2015 with Xenoblade X at 22GB. I just don't see where FF7 and Square stick with Nintendo if we see the reality of who Nintendo was and still is.