Nintendo have not had solid 3rd party support since the SNES really. When the N64 was announced and a cartidge based format was decided on, Squaresoft(notoriously pro-Nintendo up to that point) hit the road, Capcom themselves released basically nothing for the N64, same with Namco. This hit Nintendo hard as this meant major Japanese RPGs(save Zelda of course), fighting games(Namco and Capcom) and the arcade ports that were the huge craze at the time(Time Crisis, Point Blank, Xmen VS Street Fighter etc) all went to Sony's console. The massive storage of CDs compared to cartridges also enticed developers over to create mass appeal games like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil(although the second one was ported over very late in the N64s life), Metal Gear Solid etc. These were really ground breaking games that Nintendo missed out on.
The N64 was really Nintendo and Rare doing most of the work. Goldeneye, Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Mario Kart 64, Banjo were all amazing games and broke new ground but when Rare was acquired by Microsoft, it really showed during the Gamecube years where Nintendo had to pick up the slack. I don't believe they ever fully recovered from Rare's departure and from their 90s arrogance(imposing censorship, high royalties, sticking to cartridges in the face of superior technology) and this has not gone away. They were slow to adapt to online play, they were a generation behind in supporting HD gaming, they included an expensive gamepad with the Wii U that is not utilized nearly enough to justify the mandatory expense... I don't have any sympathy for Nintendo. At least Microsoft is willing to change things when public reaction is bad..
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