I think you need to consider a few things: The N64 could actually be said to be pretty successful in North America, it sold 20 Million units in North America and was actually pretty close in sales to the Playstation until the PS2 was released (as of September 2000 it was 28 Million Playstations to 18 Million N64s). The N64's biggest failing was the Japaneese market being that they went from their high with the NES of 19 Million systems sales, to 17 Million for the SNES, and dropped to 5.5 Million for the N64; it could be argued that had it sold better in Japan it would have had a lot more key Japaneese third party support and sold better everywhere in the world. The Wii is selling really well in Japan ... Now, the Playstation, Saturn and N64 generation is not (quite) like this generation because this is how their worldwide totals looked at certain moments in time: March 1996: Playstation: 4.26M Saturn: 3.40M N64: 0 March 1997: Playstation: 13.50M Saturn:7.56M N64: 6.12M March 1998: Playstation: 32.82M Saturn:8.50M N64: 16.14M March 1999: Playstation: 54.42M Saturn:8.82M N64: 23.08M If the Playstation, Saturn and N64 generation taught us anything it is that leads tend to get expanded upon as a generation progresses...

Ssh... don't tell anyone. You'll spoil the fun of believing that Sony is dead for those who think the console wars last a couple weeks. Max. The difference between a Sony launch and a Nintendo launch is Nintendo generally pumps the big system sellers like Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros., whatever they can finish in time up front, whereas Sony holds back until the second holiday (Tomb Raider, Crash, GTA3, MGS2, FFX, GTA4, MGS4). We've seen this trend with both companies dating back as long as they've been in the industry. FFVII is generally credited with the PS's success, and there's no doubt Sony did an excellent job taking it from a niche title to a blockbuster in this country. However, REDC, Crash 2, Tomb Raider 2, even Frogger were also among the successful games released in the holiday 97 time frame.

Kwaad, the thing you should have noticed is that PS never lost its market leadership to the N64 in the US and it N64 didn't even get close in Japan, so all developers went to the PS. For PS2 it was even worse, they had a 10M lead in the US and Japan combined, and after the launch of the Gamecube/XBox and the holiday season the lead only increased, once again establishing Sony's console as the one to develop for by third parties. Of course PS3 is not dead yet, but just comparing the start of PS, PS2 and PS3 without taking the competition into account makes no sense at all.