Much of the third-party support exodus was specifically because of the fact that the N64 didn't use CDs. The early generation Playstation games didn't drive the PSX sales forward, it was only when the games that WOULD have been on N64 came out for it that it began to sell: Capcom, Konami, and Square games particularly. It's also unlikely that a lot of the smaller devs like Koei would have developed anything for the PSX under these circumstances.
Capcom and Square were instrumental in the SNES's success, and then in 95/96 they went exclusively Sony when both companies were (at the time) at the height of their popularity. The upward trajectory of both companies with Resident Evil DC, Resident Evil 2, and Final Fantasy 7 was only upward from there forward.
Capcom would only come back to Nintendo three years later in late 1999 with a paltry offering of 2 games (an inferior port of Resident Evil 2 which cost 4X as much, and a Tetris game), and then Mega Man 64 after 2000. While Capcom had returned, their major success remained on Sony consoles; they attempted to become the #2 party on Sega with Dreamcast, but the console flopped, and then they tried the same thing on Gamecube but found they had to simplify controls or not release games at all due to the Gamecube controller; again, another failed experiment. Capcom tried a couple more times: they saw some success with the Wii, but it wasn't until the 3DS that they began to flourish on Nintendo hardware again.
Square, on the other hand would remain a Playstation exclusive developer until merging with Capcom in 2003 when they began releasing games on Nintendo's handheld consoles, and a trickle of B-titles on their home consoles (primarily FF Crystal Chronicles, a genericized version of Final Fantasy with a vastly lower budget). The Square side remains focused on Playstation to this day.
These two things could have been completely different. Had Nintendo gone with CDs, Capcom and Square would have largely remained Nintendo exclusives during the Playstation generation, and these two companies alone were vital to the PSX's success and establishing the Sony brand. Theey were also not alone, Konami tried to maintain Nintendo as their primary platform, but some of their games required far more space: Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Suikoden 1 and 2, for starters. These would have been Nintendo exclusives had history been different: and who knows about Metal Gear Solid, Playstation may not have been an option for that game.
What people don't seem to recall is that Sony was not even seen as remotely important until they began getting all sorts of Nintendo exclusives that people recognized and plastering them in the commercials, then later with the "Now with over 200 games" ad around the N64 launch. While they saw success (9 million consoles sold in about 2-2.5 years) They didn't begin to win until after Nintendo began to lose: this resulted from the Nintendo's disastrous N64 launch which included obscenely high priced games, lack of content, and missing pre-rendered graphics which had been all the rage since Donkey Kong Country. The result of this, 11 million more units sold in the 10 months after the N64 launch, so Sony went to 20 million units, and N64 sales had died due to the fact that 10 months later the number of games on retail shelves for the N64 hadn't changed a great deal, meanwhile Playstation had more than tripled its already impressive library, they were advertising 500 games when you could literally list every one of the 2 dozen or so N64 games available in your head, and you probably knew most to all of the games announced (if you were a Nintendo fan like me).
Had the N64 had CDs, it would have launched with Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Resident Evil, instead of a dozen new games over a 6-10 month period, it would be 2-300 new games, with Final Fantasy 7 topping that list off. Variety alone would have made a difference, but the fact that new games would only be about 1/2 to 2/3rds the price, there's no doubt that the N64 wouldn't have had an even stronger 1997 than Sony ended up having.
What would have happened to Playstation? It wouldn't have received that initial boost of relevance from gaining all those Nintendo exclusives from third parties who required CDs. All that hype would have gone into the N64. It wouldn't be the console getting games at about a 15:1 ratio to the competition. It would have no edge since the N64 was significantly more powerful (it was somewhat bottlenecked due to the fact that all that power could only be used to run 8-32MB games, while PSX could do multi-disk games ranging 100X times that space for a far cheaper price). No doubt, the Playstation would have remained that obscure console that is "still better than Sega Saturn at least." Kind of like how 3DO was better than Atari Jaguar.
Anyway, the world would look very different. I wonder if Microsoft would have become involved with the console industry? Was it Sony that influenced them? Or was it Sega? (since they worked with Sega).
Hard to say, but Nintendo would have dominated the industry quite heavily. We probably wouldn't have had a Gamecube, it is more likely that Nintendo would have allowed the N64 to live a few years longer and jumped to Wii or a Wii-like console earlier. The Gamecube was a bit of a stopgap, they had been looking for that next big thing after 3D; and during the N64 era it became clear that Nintendo had been looking for some sort of advancement in controllers (even Sega had been talking about it), but that never materialized.
One other thing that would have happened was the Wii would have been a lot more expensive and a lot more powerful. Part of the reason for them dropping the power of the Wii was they saw an advantage to having a cheaper price and no advantage to having larger power (after the failures of the N64 and Gamecube). The Wii motion controls would have likely remained the core feature since revolutions in gaming interface had been a feature of Nintendo from the birth of their first console onward. The Gamecube was probably a stopgap because the best thing they came up with was a big green central button which turned out to be problematic for action games which was probably their poorest attempt (aside from maybe the Wii U's big screen in the middle of the controller which split the attention in a very disruptive way, at least with the DS it isn't a problem to look at both screens at once).
One more thing, I think the Wii would have received a DS-Lite like revision since Nintendo releasing it earlier would probably mean that they would be using an older revision of their hardware.
On generational growth. While the NES sold more than the SNES, this is because it was available for about double the time in some regions. NES was a weird generation. The demographic of gamers was clearly growing steadily from the 80s onward. While people point out that European countries had a drastic increase in sales from SNES to Playstation, it is ignoring that many in European countries simply gamed on other platforms (My first console was a VC 20). The NES and SNES had really clumsy launches, and so availability was weird (if you're a gamer as old as me, you might remember driving all day just to reach a city where they sold an NES for a decent price), as well, Nintendo was a Japanese company, and so most games came from Japanese studios, many weren't released in EFIGS or to the PAL consoles, so we had to import and use Fire converters to get the games running, then about 1994 emulation became very popular in European countries. What I am trying to get at is that the Playstation didn't create the market growth, the market growth was in progress, but some of the games on Playstation did heavily expand it. While games like Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy 7 may not have sold to everyone who had a Playstation, just about everyone who had one played these games at some point. Crash Bandicoot was kind of popular in a "Well I guess Sony needs a mascot too" sort of way, it was the game your mom got for you at Christmas, not a really high-demand game that gamers themselves bought. Gran Turismo was that game that looked flashy, probably came with your console, and you played 1-2 times and then not again (though some did become big fans of it).
ANYWAY! I'm ranting a lot and am probably making a lot of incomplete thoughts. To summarize my positions.
1. N64 wouldn't have had the droughts due to a significantly higher software output.
2. N64 wouldn't have had the overly long cartridge related dev times.
3. N64 games wouldn't have cost WAY more than they should have (CDs are cheaper).
4. N64 would have exceeded Playstation's success, and been the first home console to 100+ million, maybe 120M since it would have bit into the early 2000s expansion.
5. Playstation would have remained the 3DO range of obscurity.
6. Gamecube probably wouldn't exist.
7. The N64 would have gone a few years longer.
8. The Wii would have launched a couple years earlier.
9. The Wii would have been more powerful
10. There would be a "Wii Lite" revision similar to the DS Lite due to the first one probably not being the sleek design they originally envisioned.
11. Nintendo would have remained the dominant company in the console and handheld market int he same way Windows dominates the PC OS market.
12. No doubt Nintendo would have been the exclusive home of peripheral games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
Would we have got a 3DS? Would we have got a Wii U? A Switch? I don't know. My gut says probably not. At least not until much later after the technology became viable, since Nintendo's core console for the Wii U generation would have no doubt been more powerful.
Last edited by Jumpin - on 22 August 2019I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
