What if Super Mario 64 was a failure?

[Jumpin]

Mr Puggsly said:

Soundwave said:

The system had so few releases especially early in its life cycle though that removing Mario 64 would've been catastrophic. Your launch title then becomes Pilotwings 64 and nothing else until Wave Race 64. The system would've sputtered like the Sega Saturn did. 

N64 at launch was indeed slim. But many other titles helped boost N64 games over time. Like Mario Kart, Goldeneye, Smash Bros, etc.

N64 would have sold less units without Mario 64. But it wouldnt have sold as poorly as Saturn. Gamecube still sold 20 million and it really didnt have any iconic games like N64.

In Germany, N64 launched with like 2 games, and there were 3 more over the next 6 months. Worst period in Nintendo history. It wasn't really until the Wii/DS era that Nintendo saw a proper release schedule again.