as part of the controversial technological tradeoffs between storage and performance, which has been endemic to the entire computing industry, and which nintendo had faced since the famicom's cassette and floppy disk systems, the selection of a cartridge format for the nintendo 64 was essential to several developers' ability to deliver top quality games. however, the choice of cartridge format coupled with the commercial failure of the supplemental 64dd were also key factors in nintendo losing its dominant position in the gaming market. some of the game pak's advantages are actually nullified by its disadvantages.