john ricciardi, writing for "electronic gaming monthly", called nintendo's decision to stick with a cartridge format for the nintendo 64 "stubborn". the author called it a major contributor to the company's competitive disadvantages, even more so than the failed partnership with sony to create a cd format and console. brian dipert, writing for "edn magazine", said that the nintendo 64 game paks are "bulky and expensive, eating into nintendo's profit margins compared with competitors’ inexpensive cd and dvd plastic discs". on a more positive side of the topic, aaron curtiss of the "los angeles times" praised nintendo's choice of the cartridge medium with its "nonexistent" load times and "continuous, fast-paced action cd-roms simply cannot deliver", concluding that "the cartridge-based nintendo 64 delivers blistering speed and tack-sharp graphics that are unheard of on personal computers and make competing 32-bit, disc-based consoles from sega [saturn] and sony [playstation] seem downright sluggish". describing the quality control incentives associated with cartridge-based development, curtiss cited nintendo's position that cartridge game developers tend to "place a premium on substance over flash", and noted that the launch titles lack the "poorly acted live-action sequences or half-baked musical overtures" which he believed were usually found on cd-rom games at the time.