Personally i think 'mediocre' is the perfect word to describe the OG Xbox's sales. Without context i see 25m units as a sales failure for a product backed by a major company like MS, but within the context of the market at the time the upgrade from failure to 'mediocre, but well enough to give Microsoft the greenlight to stay in the industry' fits. I highly doubt MS saw it as much more than that either. You don't lose $5b+ and celebrate a 6/7:1 sales loss.

It was a failure in the sense that its library was pretty mediocre. Every single game people talked about in this thread were made by Nintendo or Rare. That's no coincidence, those were the only two places you could get hype for the system. Not to mention, the console was useless for certain genres (RPGs, fighting games...)

I too have no idea why it's a console held in such high regard. The only reason people say it's a GOOD console (or, even worse, better than the PS1) is because of nostalgia.

Coming off the SNES I watched Nintendo's third party support die on the N64. Seeing Squaresoft go to PlayStation was massive at the time and all the RPGs followed there.

Also, the games looked awful to me then and have aged even worse. Early polygon games were like going back to Atari 2600. The only time I felt games looked good were sprites or those FMV scenes (which N64 struggled to do). I never liked the controller and once the Dual Shock came out it was night and day. it was made for Mario 64, which is great if you liked that game, but for me it remains the lone Mario main line title I do not enjoy.

Now, the N64 did have some good games, but it was like the Wii U, amazing Nintendo game followed by months of nearly no games. Those stretches really hurt the system while PlayStation seemed to be getting tons of support. Also, the games were more expensive, routinely $20 more than competition ($60 v. $40). We complain now about Watch Dogs coming late to Wii U, on the N64 it was Resident Evil 2 that came over much later and cost more on N64.

I really think we'll have this same conversation about the Wii U in a decade when it has a full slate of Nintendo games over 5-6 years the library will look good. The N64 was the beginning of a Nintendo console becoming a secondary or complementary console and no longer most gamer's primary one.

I never thought it was a failure. The Gamecube and so far the Wii U are failures though.

This sums up my thoughts perfectly.

Because many of the posters here are at the age where the N64 was their first console. I was a Nintendo guy through and through. Had the NES and SNES and regularly engaged in SNES vs Genesis arguments on the school bus. The N64 made me step back and re-evaluate things.  I didn't like the type of games being released for it, and the controller was horrible.

I think it single handedly made me stop playing console games for a generation and go strictly PC. If I had known better, I would have done the Playstation thing, but my mind was made up. I'm actually only getting caught up these days with a backlog of PS games I missed during that generation.

But other than the lean N64 years, I'm definitely back in the Nintendo camp.

33,000,000 is not a flop...

The first Xbox was a huge failure. It lost billions. I don't think any cosole has lost that much money, even PS3. 

um may I ask where the heck you guys are getting this genesis sold over 40 million from...everything i ever saw had it capped out at 33

Best Nintendo console! In no way did it fail