And if cats had gills, they could live underwater.

This thread is basically saying that if Nintendo were Nintendo while not being Nintendo then they could have remained at the top. The N64 not having a CD slot was a symptom, it wasn't the root of the problem.

Why did Nintendo fall despite having an absolute stranglehold on the market? Because of attitude. They got to the top by being ruthless and controlling. When someone else came along that exploited those weaknesses, they took a major hit. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Playstation hit at the exact perfect time. Developers and publishers were itching to break out from Nintendo's grasp. Much of the third-party market was eager for competition to emerge. They wanted someone who listened to them, who gave consideration to their opinions, who allowed them room for profit, and was ready to explore new technology and themes.

Here is a quote from a Square executive about FF7:

Yoshihiro Maruyama, Executive vice president, Square U.S. - I don’t think [anyone from Nintendo gave us a hard time]. They said, “Oh, we don’t need that.” That’s what they said. [Laughs] Their philosophy has always been that Nintendo hardware is for their games, and if a publisher wants to publish, “OK you can do it.” But if you don’t like it, “We don’t want you.” http://gonintendo.com/stories/271612-square-enix-dev-says-nintendo-told-squaresoft-to-never-come-back

Nintendo put themselves above gaming and tried to define the market. I have no sympathy for the N64.

I remember how hard I wanted a N64. I wanted to play Mario64 so bad. Buy my parents gave me a PS1. Cheaper console, cheaper games, and very good ones! I remember forgetting even that N64 existed...
I fell in love with Sony. The rest, as they say, its history.

So, where does this put the WiiU and the Switch? underpowered tablets in bigger plastic cases? hmmm....

Take Mario and Zelda away, and make Rare games multiplatform, and we'll also have very interesting scenarios to talk about. How about that?

Some people here, I swear to God...

And don't think I forgot you are the guy of the "1 TFLOP Tegra X1!" false hype thread either.

Ninty consoles have always been frontloaded, Sony's haven't, so that's all there is to it, really.

The PS1 had over 2000, the N64 had around 400. There's more good games on the PS1 than there are games on the N64. Also, there are many horrible games on the N64 too, like Superman 64 and Carmageddon 64. This seems to be a common thing nowadays, many contest that it was merely that the N64 had better games but not enough people knew about them, completing dismissing all of the great games that the PS1 had.

If Nintendo actualyy listenend for once what Third party developers wanted with a console, instead of just dropping it on the market and see where that goes. While maybe just maybe Square and others wouldn't have run off to Sony and pretty much handing over the generational win. Sure hardware wise the PS1 was pretty unimpressive, but it's library was amazing and Sony actually invested something in Europe. A move which pretty much guarantees a Sony home console will at least do great in one market.

I am sorry but I fully disagree with your first sentnce and almost your entire post actually....the N64 had a FEW great games but the rest of the library was trash. The PS1 BYF AR had more good and great games than the N64 and I ABSOLUTELY loved my N64 but it was nowhere near as good as the PS1. And No the N64 was not superior to the PS1 in every way....not at all. I can't speak on the "secret shopper" stuff for sure BUT to say it a FACT that they had it done based on hear say and a few  random things you saw is just crazy. And if it was really well known it should be easy for you to find about Sony having people do that for the PS. Not saying it could not have happened but you have to provide some type of prrof with a claim like that.

And Sony was already in the market....you speak all that about Sony but absolutely ignore the arrogant ignorance that was Nintendo with the N64....I was around back then I rememebr all the stuff that theys aid to 3rd party developers.....that was when 3rd party support with Nintendo systems began to all but disappear because they acted as if they didn't want any game not made by Nintendo on their system( I see someone in this thread actually posted one of the examples regarding FF). Sony didn't bully anything Nintendo LITERALLY handed them the industry on a silver platter by being arrogant and making stupid decisions with not only the N64 but also with the Gamecube.

And lastly every gaming machince is an under pwoered PC in a plastic case lol why single out the PS4? And if Sony only did well because of hype and ignorant fans then they would have been gone from the industry a long time ago....heck if it was just hype and ignorant fans the PS4 would not be selling as well as it is now either. It just seems like you don't like Sony and that is fine you have your preferences. But this entire post was just fully of false statements and seemed like a rant form someone to jsut down a company they do not like.....imo of course.

First, the idea that Playstation has never brought anything revolutionary to the industry--do you know what dual analog controls are?  You know, the scheme that everyone uses today?

Second, the idea of poor Nintendo being bullied by Playstation is like the idea of the Roman Empire being bullied by the Visigoths.  The biggest bully on the block got a dose of their own medicine?  We're talking about the company that wrapped up North America by forcing developers to sign illegal, one-side contracts, basically poisoning the market for Sega.  They even tried to kill the Playstation in court before it was launched.

As for why Sony has done so well, that's easy.  It's because of games.  They offered more choice to consumers and more support to developers.  Games are kind of important to, you know, gaming.  It's a really easy equation to figure out.  

Nintendo's treatment of third parties as well as their decision to go with cartridges doomed them.

They had the best hardware (ps1 graphics looked like crap compared to n64 graphics, as soon as mario 64 came out ps1 graphics felt like last gen), they had four player built in which at the time was incredible and they backed it up with AMAZING multiplayer games which made n64 THE party console, it had, other than rpgs, hands down the best top lineup of games of the gen.

Not to say ps1 didn't have plenty of great games, but the top 10 or so games for ps1 was basically rpgs and metal gear solid. The thing is, ps1 is when rpgs, and especially final fantasy, were in their heyday in terms of popularity. The snes square rpgs are some of my top games ever, if it wasn't for them i wouldn't consider the snes to have the best library of all time. Coming off their increasing popularity, and with the introduction of 3D, rpgs and especially final fantasy just exploded and have never been as popular before or since. I wanted a ps1 solely to play square games - there were other good games but that was the bullet in nintendo's side and as an n64 owner it was painful to miss out on that. Plus the mix of still really popular 2d fighting games from the 16 bit days and the new novelty of 3d fighting games (which turned out to not be a good genre but at the time people were interested cuz it was new) also hurt n64 badly since they only had a couple good fighting games.

If nintendo had been nicer to third parties and gone with CDs, they would have kept all the jrpg's that got popular on the snes and would have had much more third party support, cheaper games, no ridiculous game droughts or complete lack of genres like rpgs (Quest 64 anyone? haha) and likely ps1 sales and n64 sales would have been reversed. ps1 had nothing to match nintendo's first party forays into 3d with n64, but the thing is ps1 had everything else while the n64 got huge game droughts.

But as we all know, nintendo did as they so often do, and just royally screwed themselves (we're seeing it still now 20 years later with discontinuing NES Classic, just horrible business ideas), they had their standard F#$% You attitude to third parties and went with the more expensive less capacity software medium, got hardly any games.

The OP's graph shows everything you need to know, ps1 was nothing special and didn't have much in the way of great games, n64 came along and had huge initial sales (mario 64 blew away everything on the playstation), then ff7 hit, momentum shifted, and it was all over.

With the n64 they showed the industry how to make incredible 3D games, how to make 4 player absolutely necessary - the first party console, introduced rumble, introduced the analog stick, still has some of the very best games every made, and f#$%ed up everything else.