No. The major problem Nintendo had was to let only selected publishers on the system in the first place. Also Sony was able take advantege of it's distribution channel - where they sold Sony's TVs and Walkmans, they could sell Playstations. This is roughly as meaningful as online vs. brick and mortar.

Also, the big hitters came way too late for N64. During the games drought after the big hits coming out, the competition had already steady stream of games coming, that was impossible for Nintendo to catch anymore.

Probably yes. It would be a very close race (and, as it was remembered here, in Europe Sony would have won anyway), but I think that with CD-ROM drive the N64 would not have lost RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, which was crucial for its failure in Japan (where it sold less than Sega Saturn), and would maintain successful franchises made by third-parties like Capcom and Konami.
Nintendo 64 did well in the USA, it sold 20 million units, slightly less than the SNES, which shows that it had the potential to have won in America if it had a larger game library.

For those saying PS1 games looked better because of CD... Sony's console has also a higher polygon count on screen and higher/sharper res textures as far as I know. Also, it was a lot easier for developers to jump into in terms of licensing (on top of being cheaper), plus Sony's marketing targeted a more mature and wider audience (games with more cinematic approach cought the attention of adults that were never interested in games before). It kind of remind me of what SEGA did in the 16bit era.
I agree it could've been a very different scenario if N64 had CD, and is a nice "what if' for a nintendo fan to dream of, but I'm glad a company was able to take nintendo and their tirannycal rules down (SEGA came close a few years before).

No. Just for the fact that Hiroshi Yamauchi ruled Nintendo with an iron fist which would have driven away 3rd party developers when given a choice. These developers has a choice to either support the Saturn or the PlayStation or both. And looked what happened.

Playstation resolutions were terrible compared to N64. The only thing PS1 was better at with in-game graphics was that technically it had a higher polygon count, but what it could do with those polygons was crap compared to N64. PS1 textures were super pixelated and looked abysmal compared to N64 textures, PS1 graphics were super glitchy and the jaggies on polygons were far more pronounced than on N64, PS1 particle effects were also far inferior to N64. I don't get why anyone tries to say PS1 games looked better because in reality they looked far worse. N64 was significantly more powerful than PS1 and it was very obvious graphically. Yeah PS1 had FMV and cgi cut scenes simply due to the fact that it had room for those things on disc while N64 didn't on cartridge, but those aren't in-game graphics. N64 graphics blew PS1 away in every regard.

Anyway, to answer the question, I don't know if Nintendo would have won that generation if it had CDs but it certainly would have been a hell of a lot closer. Third parties were still very happy to go away from Nintendo's bad policies regarding them, even without getting the extra space CDs allowed on PS1. So PS1 may have still have more games, but Nintendo would have kept some key games like the Final Fantasy games which would have been huge. N64 had such a slow release schedule that would be unthinkable these days. Literally like a game or two would come out most months. If they had gone with CDs they would have had a far more regular release schedule, had a library full of 3rd parties though likely still lacking behind Sony, would have kept some major series like Final Fantasy, and of course still have the best games of the gen that N64 did get like Mario, Zeldas, MK, GoldenEye, etc. People are saying N64 would have cost $100 more with a CD drive...is that really true? It's hard to imagine taking out cartridges and adding in a CD Rom drive would add $100. Let's say $50 is more reasonable, which still would have put N64 in a good price range.

With CD's N64 would have had everything going or it - most of the absolute best games of the gen from Nintendo and Rare, best graphics by far, would have kept Square in Nintendo's corner so N64 would have been the RPG console instead of PS1, a much heavier release schedule full of 3rd parties though possibly still not quite as full as PS1, ability to create larger games and include FMV and cgi cut scenes which became a fad that generation. Can't say if it would have beaten Sony, but PS1 would have gotten far fewer sales and N64 would have gotten probably at least double the sales it did so I think it certainly would have had a chance to beat PS1.

I say it hinges on sports games. Sports games were huge and in that a lot of people want to buy the system that has the best sports games (something that still holds Nintendo systems back). Most of the good sports games went to PS1. N64 still had more and better sports games than say Switch does today, but anyone who loved sports games had a PS1. With CDs its very possible N64 sports library would have been on par with PS1's, and when you factor in the better graphics and 4 player N64 had I think it's very possible sports fans would have bought N64 in droves instead of Playstations, which could have been the deciding factor and made N64 beat out PS1, perhaps but a good bit.

The N64 didn't lose because it still used carts. Or at least that's only 20% of the reason. The other 80% was because that was when it nearly totally lost al their party support. Playstation basically built their platform on the failings of Nintendo. Hell, you can even say that the only reason PlayStation even exists today is thanks to how Nintendo treated sony.

In a manner of speaking, Playstation s the bastard step child of Nintendo.

It did not have higher polygon count - of course depends on the game, but N64 was roughly twice as powerful when it comes to polycount, and also the hardware effects were much better. PS could stream textures from CD (N64 could do this too, but there wasn't space on cartridge to do that) and N64 had incredibly small texture cache, which is why N64 graphics were blurry.

Ummm... No.  When Nintendo announced their partnership with Phillips, Sony had every intend to cut their losses and abandoned the PlayStation project.  They were not under any obligations to continue it.  But it was Ken Kutaragi that convinced the then president of Sony that "Nintendo publicly shamed Sony" and that the PlayStation project should continue.  And when examining a found "Nintendo PlayStation" prototype, it was concluded that the peripheral would have been no more powerful than the SNES it was designed for.  So given some of the business and technical development details prior to the original PlayStation and the PlayStation itself, it was more of a "rebirth" for Sony and a botched opportunity for Nintendo.

Like the last thread, people said "Third parties were running from Nintendo!"

I pointed out that the makers of all the big PS1 third party games STILL supported Nintendo (aside from Square). They just didn't support them with the BIG games. Namco, Konami, Capcom, etc. never stopped working with Nintendo. The hardware just couldn't handle a lot of those games.

*Edit*

And Square only left Nintendo for the gen because the N64 couldn't handle FFVII.

No, I don't think so. Sony would have bought 3rd parties nevertheless and Nintendo is and was not able to make enough content alone. Games sell consoles. A few games a year are not enough. I look at you, Wii U.