It should have, and it was the best console going around. Nintendo short lived it to move onto the Gamecube era which was a mistake. They should have just stuck with it for 10 years like Sony do with there consoles and N64 would have surpassed 80m easily.
Definitely my favourite console of all time. The N64 library was full of so many amazing games, compare that to my PS1 which had so many cheap 3rd party (Shovelware/Broken) i think i have 4 to 5 great PS1 games (Half of them were on PC) while with the N64 there 1st party games were just in leagues of there own.

The only Nintendo consoles i don't own are the N64 and Wii. Of course they have great games, but i don't regreat not owning them. But anyone that own or did own them, and had fun with them, that's all that matter.

Well can't argue with this )

Hopefully the success of the Switch will bring a new F-Zero. It would only bolster its library even more. But allas, Oddisey will be the one that will sell me on the device

1. Nintendo would've destroyed Sony in Japan with FF7 and DQ7 (which actually was originally announced for N64! Yamauchi himself announced this at Shoshinkai 1995). Remember Sony wasn't even able to beat the Sega Saturn in Japan until Final Fantasy VII showed up. They would've been beaten like a red headed step child, likely all the way down into third place in Japan (yes remove the RPG exclusives and break Konami/Capcom exclusivity and they tumble below the Sega Saturn in Japan IMO). 

2. No, but look at that chart, it's hard to deny FF7 coincidentally releases right before PS sales explode. Before that it's sales were I mean lets be real, in 1996 it went through several months where it sold along the lines of the Wii U. Yes, even with Resident Evil and Tomb Raider and WipeOut. Worse than Wii U. It took *two* full years for the Playstation to really start selling worth a lick even in the US. 

3. Sony could money-hat, but if the N64 had actual support it's market adoption, which was already red hot from its record breaking first year would have only accelerated. And which company would then want to limit themselves exclusively to the smaller Playstation audience? Maybe Namco because they apparently hated Nintendo back then, but Capcom, Konami? Nope and nope. Even the Tomb Raider people probably eventually would've told Sony to go pound sand. Exclusivity deals don't happen generally speaking if you don't have the overwhelming userbase advantage to go with it, and Sony does not get said advantage if the N64 has a steady flow of games due to the CD format. 

It's always the same side having a problem with acceptance and trying to revise history.

Let's take a look at the facts...

- By the end of the SNES era, Nintendo still had very good support from Capcom, Square, Konami, Enix, etc.
- Excepting Square, all these companies were supporting the Saturn and other systems.
- Including Square, these companies support was strangely absent from the N64.
- The N64 sold amazingly in it's first year, far better than the Saturn, so clearly system sales weren't a problem for multiplats.
- The N64 hardware capabilities matched or exceeded the Saturn, so clearly hardware wasn't a problem for multiplats. Except...
- The N64 didn't use CDs as its game media.

The evidence is clear. No matter how much people want to glorify their overheating SNES-CD and spin things in its favor, the truth is that it didn't won that gen on its own merits, but because of a single fatal mistake from its closest competitor. And that is the truth.

From a gameplay perspective though (ignoring what "made sense" business-wise) I am glad Nintendo stuck with cartridges. CD drives and by extend the PlayStation one were terrible back them. Playing the fast and smooth N64 after sitting through an afternoon of loading screens and read errors was always a godsend.

Could've kept the cartridge slot, there's no rule that says you can't have both. Saturn did. Hell they could've just ditched the RAM expansion slot and let the cartridge slot act as a RAM expansion slot when using CD games. This is exactly what the Saturn did. 

You also easily could've done things like cartridge games that offload all music/voice acting to a 5 cent CD disc ... thus not using up valuable and expensive cartridge space, allowing for more space for game data too even if you wanted to make a cartridge game. This would've been a huge addition to the N64 too since it lacked a dedicated sound chip. 

oh what an horrible console, I had one for the Zelda games... honestly, it collected dust most of the time after I finished Ocarina of Time... the PSX and Saturn were more interesting to me.

The N64, like a lot of nintendo stuff is over rated if anything.

Yeah well that kinda happens when you don't have any dev support.

Remove FF7/8/9, MGS, Sympony of the Night, and even middle tier games from the Playstation, and just give it 1-2 games a month mainly from Sony like a Crash Banidcoot here and there and I doubt the Playstation sells even 10 million units. 

N64 also had harsh, arrogant, alienating (albeit visionary) president that has screwed over many 3rd parties in the previous generations. You cannot put all the blame on Square and FFVII, although that was the main factor, I concur.