"I always wondered why they hung onto cartridges for as long as they did."
As far as I remember, people did not like optical media.
When Sega added a new optical attachment for their Sega Genesis, nobody bought it.
Optical media required loading. Interactivity was lost. You had "Dragon's Lair" kind of games that had tremendous quality but felt prefabricated.
It was only much later with he first PSP that people started using them, after PC era of CD shareware like doom or dune. The advantages(immense amount of memory, distribution easiness, and PIRACY) overcame their drawbacks.
> Interactivity was lost. You had "Dragon's Lair" kind of games that had tremendous quality but felt prefabricated.
That's a product problem though, not an engineering one. Games suddenly had all this space but nothing to do with it because graphic engines were, for the only time in the history of video games, running behind hardware capabilities. So we got those awkward "uncanny valley" type FMV games/interactive movies and what not because those were the only ones that justified the need for optical discs.
As far as I remember, people did not like optical media.
When Sega added a new optical attachment for their Sega Genesis, nobody bought it.
Optical media required loading. Interactivity was lost. You had "Dragon's Lair" kind of games that had tremendous quality but felt prefabricated.
It was only much later with he first PSP that people started using them, after PC era of CD shareware like doom or dune. The advantages(immense amount of memory, distribution easiness, and PIRACY) overcame their drawbacks.