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Soundwave on 13 September 2013
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Screamapillar said:
Soundwave said:

N64 was such a freaking beast considering it had very few games, but some really big ones.

Wii probably could've sold double what Nintendo shipped in this time frame.

I don't think people realize, the Wii U is going to have to increase its sales by like 4-5x fold just to match the GameCube's monthly rate.


At the time they really had almost no competition.  PSone was a new and untested brand/ console, and SEGA had completely fallen apart after the CD and the Saturn failed to penetrate western markets.  Different world back then.  The $50 drop from $199 alone would have meant huge sales spike in the fall of '97 just so even more people could get their hands on Mario 64.


I remember 1997 very well. The N64 was starting to show cracks in its armor by summer '97 because people weren't used to a Nintendo console without third party support back then (go figure). It was a bit of a shock.

The price drop for the N64 happened in March btw, so it wasn't that big of a deal by the holidays. If I remember correctly Sega had the craziest holiday bundle that year with like three free games bundled with a Saturn as a last ditch effort to save the system.

Holiday 1997 was really Sony's cornonation party as the new leader of the gaming industry though, they beat the N64 pretty handily even with those insane numbers. Final Fantasy VII and the avalanche of unending third party content on PS sealed the deal.

GoldenEye held up the N64 valiantly and remained in the top 10 NPD/TRST charts for like two years IIRC.