this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Cartridges actually have much faster load times than discs. Notice how the Switch has reverted back to cartridges? They're faster.
As for the controller... It is pretty odd. Though, at the time, we didn't have the same standard for controller design we have now. So it makes sense that Nintendo would try something bold. Then after they had committed to the design, the world decided the PS1 controller made much more sense, and that became the benchmark for future controller designs.
The controller was so you could use it as a d-pad or as a joystick controller
Our current format has the assumption you will use both at the same time
Cartridges were faster but held less data, currently there is no reason to use cds/dvds/blurays over sd cards
Cost. The main driver was always cost.
The PS1 succeeded for a wide variety of reasons, but arguably the most crucial one was that games cost $1 to put on shelves. That's the whole thing: box, manual, disc, and all underlying processes and shipping. N64 cartridges cost about $10 for just the cartridge, and that's before negotiating for larger ROM chips or battery-backed SRAM.
The only expensive part of CD mastering is the mold. The features are so small they cause diffraction in the visible light spectrum. But Sony had been cranking out music and software for a decade, after co-inventing the format, so... not a big deal for them. They didn't even pay licensing, when they squished a couple cents of glass into the shape of a $60 game. They could turn a CD-R into ten thousand units in like two weeks. Nintendo's lead time was three months.
Even if a modern game took six Blu-Ray disks, it'd probably be cheaper than an appropriate SD Card, or even that quantity of mask ROM. The real reason we moved away from optical media is that these prick developers kept shipping 100 GB game on glass, and then still required a 100 GB day-one patch that just overwrites everything. Even though half the reason games got so fat is content duplication, to prevent slow loading from disc!
Handhelds all use cartridges (the only exception being the PSP) because they are smaller and do not require mechanical parts.
I'm willing to bet the revert to carts had something more to do with the switch being handheld and it's small form than load times. Still a beneficial side effect though.