In hindsight, was it always smart for Nintendo to never prioritize or pursue 3rd party support?

[PAOerfulone]

Soundwave said:

Honestly, no I don't think so in the long run they would have sold more systems.

N64 would have sold north of 80-90 million systems if it retained the same 3rd party support the Super NES had (they compromised on the CD issue and kept Squaresoft happy). Mario 64 + Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX + GoldenEye 007 + Zelda: OoT would've crushed the Playstation and Nintendo would've reaped the full benefit of a growing game industry (ie: people who were kids as NES and SNES owners moving on up in their teenage years to N64 as new kids were also coming in).

I'm honestly not sure how well the Playstation does, in Japan for example PS1 was not really doing huge numbers even by about 1996 it was getting outsold there by the Sega Saturn. In the US the sales were better sure, but not like amazing prior to about late 1996. The N64 sold way, way faster out of the gate than the PS1 did. It's likely too that companies making games like Tomb Raider 2, Metal Gear Solid, etc. would not agree to exclusives on Playstation and miss out on the larger N64 userbase if it had CD. 

From there, well GameCube or N64-2 likely just repeats a similar number or goes higher as Playstation never establishes itself as a market leader, who knows if there's even a PS2.

Game Boy Advance would sell over 100 million units.

Etc. etc. You can see where this goes. Even with the Wii and DS spikes, I think they would have sold more in the long run had they maintained their position as the defacto 3rd party platform as the NES and SNES were. Game Boy would've continued on and cleaned up because of Pokemon and IMO their console side business would've grown past 90-100 million per generation just with the natural growth of the industry. 

Soundwave said:

The N64, GCN, Wii, and Wii U sold about 168 million consoles combined

In a hypothetical "alternate timeline" where Nintendo maintains their status as the defacto 3rd party platform as the NES and SNES, I think their next 4 systems would have done considerably better than that. So they lost a lot of sales here, also software sales probably would've been much higher too with more games overall being released. 

Portables would be about the same, the seed for the Game Boy resurgence with Pokemon was already planted in 1996 so that would've just proceeded as it did, and they likely would've just held handheld dominance gen after gen too. Maybe they don't spike quite as high as 150 mill like the DS did, but I think they comfortably would've sold 100+ mill portables per gen.

Even if the N64 was CD-based, I'm still unsure if the N64 would be the winner. Third parties were just sick and tired of Nintendo's crap by then in regard to their standards and practices. Yamauchi was a dick back then and they were fed up. Even with the SNES being the market leader, that didn't stop them from supporting the Genesis, which managed to wrestle quite a bit of market share away from Nintendo and be a healthy platform in its own right. So Sony jumping into the frey would have taken even MORE marketshare away from Nintendo and Sony had FAR deeper pockets than either Nintendo or SEGA. What they've been doing the last 10 years with companies like Square Enix and Atlus, they could have just as easily done back then - Throw a crap-ton of money and marketing behind 3rd party games to wrestle them away from Nintendo. And it would've worked. Because as long as those games were on Nintendo, they had a ceiling for as much as they could sell. With Sony's backing, franchises like Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy had their own marketing campaigns, spotlight, and much higher potential to reach those levels of sales. Final Fantasy VII outsold every single N64 game except Super Mario 64 because of this and it is considered by many gamers all over the world as THE PS1 game. It was one of the biggest killer apps for the system if not THE killer app. You think Nintendo under Yamauchi was going to let that happen? They would NEVER promote and back that game over their own IPs. Not a chance.

Part of why the N64 sold faster out of the gate than the PS1 was that it was selling for $199 while the PS1 was at $299. That was the main advantage of sticking to cartridges over CDs. But if Nintendo had gone with CDs and knowing how they HATE selling hardware at a loss and prefer to be profitable out of the gate - A CD-based N64... Well it sure as hell wouldn't have been $199, I can tell you that much. ESPECIALLY if it was still 64-bit? The PS1 at $299 in 1995 was sold at a loss! Sony was LOSING money on each PS1 sold to start! So given how Nintendo even to this day, but ESPECIALLY back then, prefers for their hardware to be profitable right out of the gate, it would've made the Saturn - which was selling for $399, look like an affordable option. So that would have been a huge shot in the foot for them back then and possibly made it even easier for Third parties to jump ship to Sony and SEGA.

Last edited by PAOerfulone - on 10 January 2025