Playstation was a paper tiger up until late 1997.

Nintendo would've ripped them apart if they had a decent flow of games. N64 was actually demolishing the PSX early on head to head. It's only when the droughts hit the N64 that the tide turned for Sony, otherwise they were eating Nintendo knuckle sandwhiches right and left. 

Hell I think they would have beat Sony WW even with FF taken away (but Dragon Quest would remain), it simply would've been closer. 

Put Final Fantasy on the N64 and it's just a joke. Mario 64, GoldenEye, Zelda: OoT, AND Final Fantasy VII on top of basically all the other third party games being multi-plat?

What the fuck realistically would Sony do? Release a Spyro game? Ohhhh, I'm sure that would've scared Nintendo. 

Nintendo had all the cards. You realize at the time they even outbid Sony for the Star Wars movie franchise? And this is the days before the shitty prequels when Star Wars was like an untouchable thing. They had Kobe Bryant, Ken Griffey Jr., an exclusive DOOM game (when DOOM was the biggest PC franchise), a Starcraft game, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, James Bond, working with DMA Design (the Grand Theft Auto team). They had Rareware of course which is like basically what Naughty Dog is today but they made more games, etc. etc. too. Sony wasn't the only one signing deals. I remember this from way back then and I'm glad this story came out recently, but Nintendo was even actively in discussions for rights to the Harry Potter franchise (as in period) in the late 90s too before it really took off. 

They had some phenomenonal deals then. 

Nintendo secured a deal for exclusive Star Wars games here:

http://lubbockonline.com/stories/110498/LF0065.shtml#.WPC5B7vysUs

This was a big deal for it's time, I remember seeing this on the news that Nintendo had secured a deal with LucasArts for an Episode I game (which at that time was supposed to be the mother of all movies). Actually I think Nintendo had a deal even before this, prior to the N64 LucasArts was signed up a "Dream Team" developer for Shadows of the Empire and had rights to use Star Wars characters on its packaging and what not. 

Kobe Bryant and Ken Griffey Jr. were arguably 2/3 most popular/marketable athletes of their time, only Michael Jordan would be bigger, I would say that was a pretty big get. 

Sony got a lot of exclusivity deals because why wouldn't you sign an exclusivity deal with Sony? You couldn't make your game on the N64 anyway because of the cartridge format, so why not get a break on licensing fees or some free advertising deal with Sony? By about 97 it was clear the Sega Saturn was a fucking disaster so you were better getting some sweetheart deal with Sony rather than keeping your options open for a ... Saturn port that no one would care about. I would've signed an exclusivity deal with Sony too if I was a developer, because why not? Might as well squeeze them for a sweeter deal, it's not like you were going to make money anywhere else. 

Even with the terrible cartridge format Nintendo had started to chip away at Sony's hold, they got Capcom to give them RE2 and even sign up for an exclusive Resident Evil 0, which would move on to the GameCube. Namco also buried the hatchet with Nintendo and let them make a Ridge Racer game for the N64 by 2000. By then of course the damage done was so severe that it was of little help to the N64, poor guy had suffered terribly. 

N64 got other exclusives too, even from EA, like Beetle Adventure Racing.

And no, 2D games would not have helped Nintendo. At that time, 3D was it or bust, Sega tried to push 2D games on the Saturn and it was a disaster. People were too enamored with 3D in those early years, it would take several more years for 2D to come back in vogue. CD was the answer, if they had CD they would have murdered Sony IMO. Straight up murdered them. 

Ugh... not another "Nintendo should have gone with CDs" rant. People are just never going to let that go, are they. It was 20 years ago, people. Let it go.

Never!!! I actually would really like a book to be written one day about what actually happened. There are some good books about the 16-bit era like that Console Wars book (which Sony is ironically turning into a movie), but there's not a ton on what Nintendo's thought process was here or who actually made that decision. It's never talked about really in interviews either, even though it is by far the most influential decision in maybe the history of the business. 

1. Maybe in the United States, but by late 1995 the PS1 was already surpassing the Saturn in sales in Japan, so of course not even considering N64 sales, Japanese developers would have wanted their games on the console

2. The PS1 also had at least 2 Doom games

3. DMA Design released multiple games on the PS1 as well

Boy, always love this revisionist history. If only Nintendo had a disk player, they would have won. Sorry, but no. There's a reason Nintendo didn't have a disk. This was arrogant Nintendo who didn't listen to any devs and were basically dicks. How much of a dick? They entered into a contract with Sony without reading it, I guess. Then when they finally got around to reading it, they didn't like it, so pulled out. Oh, but did they tell Sony they had pulled out? Hell no. They just allowed Sony to announce the PS and the Nintendo partnership, only to announce one with Philips shortly after. If you don't think that sent some shockwaves through the gaming scene, mostly behind the scenes, you're naive.

So, you have a dickish console maker, where Sony was offering cheaper liscencing fees, as well as more freedom for devs/pubs. Those games you assume would have been exclusives for N64 would have most likely been multiplat. Hell, some may have just stuck to the PS1 because Sony would have charged less per disc for their games and weren't as controlling. 

And while not the biggest point, it's still a good one for the general consumer, it had a much better controller for gaming. You can't even reach 1/3 of the N64 controller without moving your hand to a 3rd grip. Horrible design. Playing more complicated games was a nightmare. With the PS1 controller, especially the DS, you have access to everything comfortably. There's a reason its the standard everyone used for decades, and still do, only putting their own slight spin on it.

They made the controller specifically for Super Mario 64, and just had every other game as an afterthought.

There's actually a configuration where you can play GoldenEye with two controllers, but my main issue is that you can't turn off inverted controls.

There are A LOT of assumptions in this thread......and this CD drive thing.....I just can't see it. Nintendo just made stupid mistakes with the N64 AND the GC that followed it. Both has some great games but compared to the competition they just did not have enough games......at all.

You can't say well take away this, this and this from Sony and Nintendo would have won. That type of logic always confuses me....so leave one company the exact same and take away from the other so that Company A would win over Company B......you could literally flip things like that for any and every company. Why not just say The company that won just simply made better decisions period. The what if stuff for something over 20 years old is crazy lol.

A good read indeed but I can't agree with it personally. Sony had the better games...period.....whether they be 1st, 2nd or 3rd party is irrelevant. It isn't the fault of Sony that Nintendo screwed up and made silly business decisions.

From what I've seen it's shocking how arrogant Nintendo behaved towards third parties when developing the N64. Nintendo actually believed that people bought the NES and SNES just to play Mario and other first party games and thought that it was a privilege that third parties were allowed to develop for their systems in the first place. They basically told Square to screw themselves when Square asked to be able to develop FF7 on CDs.

Nintendo basically got what was coming to them when third party games pushed the PS1 far ahead of them. It took a while, but they finally learned that they need third parties to push units. They still made stupid mistakes with the Gamecube mini disk and making the Wii U so weak, but they have at least tried to court third parties since the N64 cartridge debacle.

The N64 with all of Square's JRPGs as exclusives plus most of Sony's third party support either as exclusives or as multiplats would have trounced the PS1.

And if the Playstation hadn't been such a success Sony likely wouldn't have made the comments which goaded Microsoft into the market.