N64 Was A Sales Beast And Should Have Won Its Generation

[forevercloud3000]

Shadow1980 said:

pokoko said:
And if cats had gills, they could live underwater.

This thread is basically saying that if Nintendo were Nintendo while not being Nintendo then they could have remained at the top. The N64 not having a CD slot was a symptom, it wasn't the root of the problem.

Why did Nintendo fall despite having an absolute stranglehold on the market? Because of attitude. They got to the top by being ruthless and controlling. When someone else came along that exploited those weaknesses, they took a major hit. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Playstation hit at the exact perfect time. Developers and publishers were itching to break out from Nintendo's grasp. Much of the third-party market was eager for competition to emerge. They wanted someone who listened to them, who gave consideration to their opinions, who allowed them room for profit, and was ready to explore new technology and themes.

Here is a quote from a Square executive about FF7:

Yoshihiro Maruyama, Executive vice president, Square U.S. - I don’t think [anyone from Nintendo gave us a hard time]. They said, “Oh, we don’t need that.” That’s what they said. [Laughs] Their philosophy has always been that Nintendo hardware is for their games, and if a publisher wants to publish, “OK you can do it.” But if you don’t like it, “We don’t want you.” http://gonintendo.com/stories/271612-square-enix-dev-says-nintendo-told-squaresoft-to-never-come-back

Nintendo put themselves above gaming and tried to define the market. I have no sympathy for the N64.

@Bolded. Third parties had an opportunity to ditch Nintendo half a decade earlier. With Nintendo's de facto monopoly broken and third parties free to develop for the Genesis, they could have told Nintendo to kiss their asses then. But they didn't.

No, this was all about format. CDs held over ten times the data of the largest N64 carts, yet cost only one tenth what an N64 cart did. That's two orders of magnitude difference on a cost-per-megabyte basis. While CDs had loading times and weren't as durable as carts, their higher capacity and lower price made them far more appealing to developers and publishers.

I am just going to interject here but....

wasn't there something about Nintendo held a firm monopoly over the production and sale of cartridges in general? They made the majority profit on every game sold due to everything needing to go through them to get it on cart. I think this combined with the fact CDs were a fraction of the production price was a huge factor in the great departure of Devs from Nintendo. 

#My2cents

#CarryOn