Miyamoto: We haven’t really been sure to what extent we need to explain it to magazines. The 64DD was originally meant as an alternative to CD-ROM. When it comes to the future of gaming media, Nintendo will continue to make cartridges, but we concluded that DD was a better option than CD for expanding the range of gameplay. It would have been easier to understand if the DD was already included when the N64 first came out. It’s getting harder to explain after the fact. (laughs) Here’s the difference between each media: CD holds a lot of data, DD holds a moderate amount of data and backs the data up, and ROMs hold the least data and process the fastest. By attaching a DD to the game console, we can drastically increase the number of possible genres. Distributing hardware that can make these new genres is a benefit of the long life of this industry. The market’s only going to shrink if there’s nothing but price drops and scale expansions for preexisting genres.

Itoi: I came up with a lot of ideas because of the 64DD. All things start with the 64DD. There are so many ideas I wouldn’t have been allowed to come up with if we didn’t have the 64DD. Including the game Cabbage.

This is a small portion of an old, but highly interesting interview with Miyamoto and Itoi. Check out the entire thing here!
Link