Sigh. Everyone always says "cartridges!" when discussing the N64, but if they were the problem, why did the N64 do triple the sales of the Saturn, which used CDs? Yes, the decision to use cartridges was a factor, but it was not the deciding factor.
The real issue was the lack of third-party support. The N64 had a very small library, and nearly everything that was at all decent was produced by Nintendo (or Rare). There were painful software droughts in the N64's history, when months and months would go by without anything being released. If you think the Wii has been going through a software drought of late, it was nothing compared to those times. The N64 launced in America with two games - TWO! - and no other games released for three months afterwards. Since software sales drive hardware sales, it was inevitable that other systems would pull ahead.
Of course, that begs the question of why didn't the N64 have good third party support, which can be broken down thusly:
- Late to market. (Playstation released two years earlier in Japan. And people complain about the 360 getting an "unfair" head start!")
- Nintendo execs arrogantly burning bridges with Japanese third parties.
- Notoriously difficult to develop games for.
- More expensive to develop games for.
- Games not on CDs. (This was the least important factor.)
Once third parties started moving towards the Playstation, it created a snowball effect. Why spend more money and more time to develop a game for the N64 when the Playstation - which had been out for 18 months longer - had a larger install base and was cheaper in cost? People like to point to Square and Final Fantasy 7, but this was only the best-known example of Japanese developers embracing Sony's platform. It was not ONE game that made the difference, but dozens of franchises from all the top third-parties (Namco, Capcom, Konami, etc.) all moving simultaneously to a rival platform. The N64 actually had a higher percentage of quality games, but for every one game on the N64, there would be five games on the Playstation, and odds were you would find something you liked there. Quantity trumped quality at first, and later the Playstation got plenty of quality games on its own.
This probably went too long, but I hate how most people always want to simplify a complex situation to "CDs".
End of 2008 totals: Wii 42m, 360 24m, PS3 18.5m (made Jan. 4, 2008)
