Part of why Sony nowadays is a game company with a movie hobby is that discs were dirrrt cheap compared to cartridges. They’d fund any stupid bullshit people wanted to make, get finished cases on shelves, and know whether consumers loved it, before N64 developers had finished negotiating a production run. Their cost per disc was measured in cents and their manufacturing turnaround was measured in days. One of the slowest and riskiest aspects of game publishing suddenly cost next to nothing.
Digital distribution isn’t necessarily cheaper per-gigabyte… but there’s no mastering. There’s no lead time. There’s not even the concept of a production run, anymore. Developers can ship whatever they want, whenever they want, to whoever they want, essentially for free.