It did not outsell the Sega Genesis

It did not outsell every Sega console, the Genesis sold over 40 million consoles compared to the N64's 33 million. Also I am under the impression that the N64 is pretty well liked by people on this site.

It let me down in my heart...

I agree I definitely wouldn't call the system a failure, but it didn't outsell the Genesis. VGC is wrong on a couple of old hardware products, the Genesis actually sold 40m units. Really the only console it outsold that was also considered successful is the Atari 2600.

Anyway I don't consider it a failure in any way like I said, and the number of PS1 vs. N64 also looks worse now than it did at the actual end of that generation. It's kind of ironic that it's held in such a high regard today, it's one of the more popular retro consoles. Prices for the both the console and it's games are quite respectable.

Failure is a relative term. It failed compared to its competition. A handicapped person or an old person would "win" a marathon simply be finishing. A person tthat was expected to win would be considered a failure.

That's why the Xbox 360 was considered a success. It went from a 20 something million userbase to over 80 million. It didn't take first or even second but it blew away expectations. The N64 didn't. It let an unknown in the gaming business--a Nintendo 3rd party studio--come in and dominate.

The N64 was a failure. It was like General Zod failing to kill Superman as a baby and then that baby growing up to break his neck in that terrible Man of Steel movie.

Pretty sure the Genesis did sell 40 million guys.

33 mill is the official number, I remember seeing it from Sega themselves a few years ago. I think it's also described in the Console Wars book. 49 mill for the SNES, 33 mill for the Genny.

The N64 wasn't a "failure" altogether per se, but it is considered a failure because it was expected to be no.1 and it basically caused the end of Nintendo's leadership in the traditional console sphere and led to the rise of the Playstation as the dominant brand in the business. 

I would say it fell short. Not sure I've personally seen a lot of people refer to it as a flop to be honest...

It failed cause it was designed for 3 handed people



As a 2 handed person i felt insulted

It really depends how you look at it, it was a flop coming after the SNES and it sold much less than 1/3 the units the PS1 sold.

As for the amazing graphics, I would ask you, have you played the games on an emulator or the original console? because the texture filtering was horrible, texture resolution was too low all games looked extremely blurry, the frame rate were generally really low (many games are barely playable) and the sound was just too muffled in a lot of titles, because of the cart format (different topic, but this is part of the quality of the titles)...

As for the controller, I never liked it, the original dualshock was a much better design for integrating thumbstick controls (and it does so while introducing dualsticks and giving you access to the D-Pad at the same time as the left analog stick, this is the design that survived to this day).

As for the game library, it's OK, but compared to the other consoles available at the time (PS1 and Saturn) it's not very interesting to re-visit, I would say it has 2 or 3 important titles (mario 64, Zelda OOt and for some the MP portion of Golden Eye 64).

I guess only very few people are calling it a failure - for me it was THE best console i have ever had. (NES, SNES, GBC, N64, GCN, DS, 3DS, Wii, X360, WiiU)
Unfortunately it was lacking RPGs, but there had been so many great games ... simply amazing. And the Controller also was very very good. You could use the C-Buttons as an second 8-way-d-pad or as 4 extra buttons. You could play several games (e.g. WaveRace64) one-handed! Not really useful, but still the controller was pretty awesome.