LogFAQs > #877640588

OneTimeBen posted...

SinisterSlay posted...

Real answer?

Power gap. The rule in game development is to build for the weakest machine that's popular.
The trouble was that graphics was all the rage, and big rpgs.
The n64 carts were a premium if you wanted 128mb. Most were 32 and 64mb. For like $30 a cart.
Meanwhile sony used regular discs, 700mb for about 10 cents each. That's a lot more game, graphics, for a lot cheaper.

30 bucks to produce a cartridge seems a bit much. No doubt it was more expensive then a disk but that can't be correct.

It may be high, but not by that much. Carts were really, really expensive. There's a reason optical media has dominated for as long as it has. It's flagging now that games are just getting too big for optical read speeds (which is why installs are so common for the Xbone/PS4) and the price gap between BD's and comparable volumes of flash memory is shrinking, but the PS1's CD's were much, MUCH cheaper than the N64's carts.