N64 had an amazing launch for the time. Nintendo would have dominated if they would have used CD's back then.

I mean it's second holiday.  The one where the chart shoots up tremendously.  I have my answer.  $150 with Goldeneye which is pretty damn compelling.

I agree if the N64 had been modified to use CDs in addition to carts (like the Saturn did) it would've trounced everything IMO. The system was extremely popular, it just didn't have the games to maintain its insane popularity because of the cart-only aspect.

Even after the system was released, it wasn't too late, they could've released a 4X CD-ROM add-on and iced that useless 64DD that went nowhere.

It would've opened the door I think to games like Resident Evil 3, Street Fighter III, Dino Crisis, all the EA Sports games, Colony Wars, Tomb Raider II, Silent Hill, Tekken 3, perhaps Metal Gear Solid even if Sony kept Squaresoft exclusive.

Wow at the enormus drought for the Wii U. It really show how bad has been the support/planificatiion for this console.

It isn't quite that bad when LEGO City, Monster Hunter Tri G are factored in, but I believe they are not included because they did not chart on the top sellers list.

Jesus christ, its worse than I imagined, supposedly the US is Wii Us best market so its even worse in Japan and Europe.

At the time they really had almost no competition.  PSone was a new and untested brand/ console, and SEGA had completely fallen apart after the CD and the Saturn failed to penetrate western markets.  Different world back then.  The $50 drop from $199 alone would have meant huge sales spike in the fall of '97 just so even more people could get their hands on Mario 64.

Only positive in that is how drastic N64's initial jump was at the 2nd holiday. Combine that with sustained growth of Wii and BAM... success.

I remember 1997 very well. The N64 was starting to show cracks in its armor by summer '97 because people weren't used to a Nintendo console without third party support back then (go figure). It was a bit of a shock.

The price drop for the N64 happened in March btw, so it wasn't that big of a deal by the holidays. If I remember correctly Sega had the craziest holiday bundle that year with like three free games bundled with a Saturn as a last ditch effort to save the system.

Holiday 1997 was really Sony's cornonation party as the new leader of the gaming industry though, they beat the N64 pretty handily even with those insane numbers. Final Fantasy VII and the avalanche of unending third party content on PS sealed the deal.

GoldenEye held up the N64 valiantly and remained in the top 10 NPD/TRST charts for like two years IIRC.

Poor, poor Sega.  I remember for Christmas in '95 my dad got us a Saturn bundled with Virtua Fighter.  A clerk at Best Buy talked him into it, telling him it was "a better machine than the Playstation".  HA! Still cracks me up to this day.  My dad was hood-winked.