N64 using cartridges.

Ruined 3rd party support and took 2nd place for the gen.

I think when Nintendo refuse Sony to make a CD add on is not the biggest mistake. No matter what happen Nintendo always "survive" with their format. We can see with their current console Wii. Wii had DVD format when Sony had BD and 360 had HD DVD.
Virtual Boy is not a mistake, Nintendo just trying to make a future console but it didn't worked in that time.
So I guest the biggest mistake is 3DS price! Only a few months Nintendo cut the price almost 30%!

Regarding Virtual Boy, it still hasn't worked.

Regarding the 3DS, price is only a small part of the issue.

A New Mario RPG should be coming out by the  end of the year, and it looks amazing so far.

Using cartridges on the N64 instead of CDs, which resulted in overpriced games, poor rendered graphics, extraoedinarily high dev costs, and no one developing games for it outside of Nintendo and Rare. It finally wnded with Nintendo losing two full generations of consoles. Among the lost was Square, which was probably Nintendo's second most important dev partner (next to Rare).

Also the GameCube was a fairly big mistake, the system looked like a purple lunchbox, had no great software aside from some Dreamcast ports/remakes an a couple resident evil games and they lost Rare (not even all of the exclusive GameCube games combined made up for the loss of Rare), and everything had to be played with that monstrosity of a controller.

I agree with everyone who said N64 using cartridges. I honestly believe that Nintendo would have easily weathered the Playstation storm if it used CDs. Sony is give a little too much credit when it came to taking down Nintendo and Sega in the 5th gen. Basically, Sony won because they fucked up the least.

Which PS1 games before the N64 set the world on fire? Jumping Flash? Destruction Derby? Twisted Metal? Good games but nothing that could really turn heads. The PS1's greatest games (Crash 1 was good and Gran Turismo was great, though) came at the hands of 3rd parties and many weren't even exclusive. Metal Gear, Castlevania, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, and more--these were the games that made people LOVE the Playstation brand and the only reason they were on Playstation (and many of them were on Saturn) was because they couldn't be done on the N64.

Third parties could pput their games on N64 and pay Nintendo's high price for cartridges, use the small amount of space for textures and audio, and sell their games for $50-$80 or more OR they could use CDs, produce the games cheaply, have a ton of space (if a little less power) to utilize, and sell their titles for $39 or less. Saturn was dead due to Sega's poor relationship with the industry and gamers. Was there even a choice? The PS1 was king by default and the PS2 didn't have to do anything but sit back and not fuck up.

Nintendo killed themselves, not by allowing the PS1 to come into existence, but by allowing it to have such an advantage when it came to software format. Coming to market a year after the competition, they should have known every advantage the PPS1 had and expanded on it. They went their own way and it blew up in their face.

Hindsight is 20/20. At the time, there was no way to tell that the Playstation would have taken off so well.

Virtual Boy!

The PlayStation made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991 when Sony revealed its console, a Super Famicom/SNES with a built-in CD-ROM drive (that incorporated Green Book technology or CDi). However, a day after the announcement at CES, Nintendo announced that it would be breaking its partnership with Sony, opting to go with Philips instead but using the same technology.[14]

The deal was broken by Nintendo after they were unable to come to an agreement on how revenue would be split between the two companies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation


During the SNES's life, Nintendo contracted with two different companies to develop a CD-ROM-based peripheral for the console to compete with Sega's CD-ROM based addon, Mega-CD. Ultimately, deals with both Sony and Philips fell through, (although a prototype console was produced by Sony) with Philips gaining the right to release a series of titles based on Nintendo franchises for its CD-i multimedia player and Sony going on to develop its own console based on its initial dealings with Nintendo (the PlayStation).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System

Nintendo was searching for a format to expand its multimedia endeavors, however for some reason Nintendo did not read the contract closely or simply didn't heed enough caution. Hiroshi Yamauchi and Co. thought they were playing Sony, but in reality, Sony would come to play Nintendo like a fiddle.

Rumors surfaced indicating that Sony lawyers had skillfully crafted the agreement so that it allowed Sony to reap publishing profits from the SNES/Super Famicom CD-based games. These were the very profits Nintendo most sought to retain.


http://www.n-sider.com/contentview.php?contentid=231

I just provided three links that show you don't have your history completely right...

One, you said the deal between Philips and Nintendo produced the N64 when it was just a partnership that fell through for a SNES add-on

Two, you think it was a mistake for Nintendo to back out of the deal

Three, get your facts right

I'm not talking about that Paper Mario stuff or mario and luigi saga, I mean a sequel to SUPER MARIO RPG. A direct sequel. that's what I want.