For a cheapskate like me the N64 was awesome here in the UK. They launched at £250 a ridiculous price which annoyed a lot of people and it had some huge reduction to £150 I think pretty quickly. It didn't seem to take long before the console was seen for less than £100 and some of the cartridge games got heavily discounted very quickly. I remember buying many cartridge games for around £10 or less. Loved the system and the games and the value was amazing. TV output quality was poor though.
The Sega Saturn was also a dead man walking console with similar discounting.
The trendy people all had their Playstations which I did get but was late to the party as the N64 kept me so busy. By the time I got to have my own Playstation the games were super cheap for that too. Not that I bought many games for the playstation cough...
I'm not sure a cd drive would have saved the N64 because at the time it was more about Sony's brilliant marketing that sold their console. Sticking a cd drive in the n64 would have meant not only the cost of the cd drive but perhaps a few more upgrades here and there. Also here in the uk the N64 only really had composite and s-video output support but the playstation had full RGB output which meant when you went into a game store the playstation graphics looked vivid and amazing and the N64 looked dull and low resolution. You could walk in planning to buy a N64 and walk out with a playstation such was the difference. That was my experience anyway.
