Alternate history: N64 goes with CDs instead of cartridges

[Quodam_Diem]

Guys, despite the fact that I am a hude Nintendo fan, I can't but see the reality. By recognising that Nintendo was the king before Playstation arrived, you underestimate Sony. First of all, the greatest factor I believe that Nintendo would still lose to Sony this generation, is the fact that her relationship with 3 Parties were as you all know not the best. The basic reason why 3 parties had their games on Nintendo platforms, had to do with the restricted policies Nintendo had towards to them and of course because Nintendo had the biggest market shares. Why do you think that even with a CD based N64, all these companies would still stick with them, when it's more than obvious that Sony tried and succedeed to have much better relations with them.

I still think that it's not about the cartridges, is something more. It has to do with the fact that developers after ten years of complete domination of the policies of Nintendo really felt that it was time for a change. And this is the reason why till today Sony dominates in this market, because they have more collaborators. Despite that, remember that Genesis really achieved to make a come back for SEGA in America. You can't ignore the fact that the console sold 17 millions (VGC) just 5 millions behind SNES. It was more than obvious that Nintendo had already started losing her reliability both to developers and to customers, with a rival console using the same format.

So, to conclude. It was just a matter of time. Nintendo didnt ever think to change their policies, they never did and this cost them a lot. And again, even with more games, in regions like Europe, N64 would never achieve such huge numbers. Why from 8m NES and 6m SNES to move suddenly to 30or 40 million N64? In America it would achieve numbers close to 30 million and in Japan the NES Numbers, but ROTW wouldn't have any impact. N64 limit would be around 50-60 million install base. And Playstation would be around 70 to 80. 40m in Europe, 10m ROTW, at least 20m in America (but I can say 30 too, it would be close with N64). In Japan is hard to calculate, but if we take into consideration that N64 would have the big japanese hits, then I would see for PS the same numbers as any other failed console had done untill then (close to 5 million). Overall, 50-60 for N64 and 70-80 for PS1.

And I telll you this guys. I would really really like these numbers to be the real ones. And why I tell this? Because, PS1 was groundbreaking for the time it came out, a very good investment from Sony and they deserved to get the victory.