It depends. Had they used reg CD Roms. FF7 is on N64 and it gets better 3rd party support. Had Nintendo gone with CD Rom BUT customized with a smaller capacity like they did with Gamecube. The story might not have changed too much. Still, better 3rd party support is likely as even custom discs cheaper than cartridges but most devs opt for Sony still including Square.

Nintendo would have demolished Sony if the N64 used CDs.

The N64 was outselling the Playstation in the US for a good long stretch (through a big part of 1997) with barely any games, if Nintendo had retained most of their SNES-era support by using CD-ROM, Sony would've been toast. The Playstation only got ahead because the game disparity was ridiculously one sided, Playstation had hundreds of games, N64 often times was stuck with like 1 game a month. 

GoldenEye 007 was *the* game in the West in that generation IMO, Sony had nothing to match Mario 64 and Zelda: OoT either. Nintendo was just ridiculous in handicapping that system, if had reasonable amounts of games, it would have won in North America at least for sure. 

In the case of Sega and Microsoft, I'd actually argue that, rather than a third console stumble, they actually had second console lucky flukes, and their third consoles were more reflective of their overall performance. The Genesis was definitely the outlier for Sega console sales. Only the Genesis made it past 10 million units sold. The 360 was, to a lesser degree, an outlier in sales for the Xbox line. In both cases, a lot of the reason for their success was because they were able to exploit blind spots in the positions of the market leaders. The Genesis had momentum going by the time the SNES launched a year later, and it didn't help that Nintendo messed up on the biggest third party game of 1993 (Mortal Kombat). The 360 likewise beat the PS3 to market by a year and took advantage of the relatively weak PS3 launch. In both cases, the momentum eventually swung back to the market leaders by the end of the generation thanks to the market leaders bringing out a lot of big guns (DKC, FF6, Super Metroid, The Last of Us) while the Genesis and 360 were fading away.

I'd add 360 and Genesis killed their momentum shifting gears to focus on add-on peripherals. SEGA CD/32X for SEGA and Kinect for Xbox. So, both focus less on the core audience and games for these add-ons, which fewer people owned.

Was so disappointed in the Xbox One. The reveal was trash, sure, but they reversed course on most of that. But then they seemed to just decide not to release any exclusives... Part of my disappointment was my own fault - I figured Alan Wake 2 was coming to the console - but its just baffling to me what they were thinking.

As bare as the PS5's exclusive library has been, it is miles better than what the Xbox One had. It was like they just decided not to support it.

Yep. 32X becoming an industry punchline and infighting between Tom Kalinksy and his bosses in Japan over their refusal to listen to him on what worked helped doom the Saturn. It didn’t help that the Saturn was geared towards Japanese arcade-goers at a time when the market was shifting away from arcades. The Sega CD did at least give us cool games like Lunar and Vay. I have Vay on Steam, and I’m excited about Lunar Remastered. 

The 360 got a huge boost from Kinect, and Microsoft decided to go all in on it with the X1. The X1 was designed around Kinect. Once people rejected the concept of a Kinect-based console, it’s like Microsoft didn’t know what to do after their silver bullet missed. 

In both cases, they completely misread the market and mistook lucky flukes for long term success. 

Saturn

Xbone honestly was not that bad as a console. It was just rendered a bit irrelevant because PS4 was superior. Series XS is worse, Microsoft decision to release everything on PC made Series SX totally useless. If PS5 was available a plenty since the start of generation I doubt Series would even cross 30 million

Sega really only had about 3 good years in the console market total, lol.

1992, 1993 (Nintendo made a dumb error in censoring Mortal Kombat 1 which then gave Sega an edge), and 1994 primarily.

By 1995, the wheels were already clearly falling off the wagon, even by '94, Nintendo had reversed course and allowed blood in Mortal Kombat 2 + Donkey Kong Country came out and blew Sonic out of the water. 

So returning to crap sales was basically just going back to normal for Sega.

The Saturn also has to be one of the funniest launches ever, I remember just walking into a Blockbuster Video one day in the spring and randomly the Saturn was available to rent/buy, lol, and I kept track of all gaming news even way back then with gaming mags, and even I was a bit stunned that they literally just surprise launched a console and this was just a few months after the 32X had came out. 

Imagine just walking into a store today and Switch 2 is on the storeshelves and Nintendo just bothered to tell no one. 

Tell you what tho. SEGA CD at least has Android Assault. Robo Aleste. Popful Mail. Lunar. Snatcher. Sol Feace. The fuck did Kinect have?

Sounds like Atari, maybe 5 if you consider the entire 1977-1982 block of 2600 a success before the 5200 and crash. 

Funny enough, I don't know if Atari really fits the third console curse. 7800 did worse than most consoles in history but did better than 5200 and Jaguar.