List of all N64 FPS:

Goldeneye sold 8 million, Perfect Dark sold 2.52 million, and Turok 1 sold 1.56 million. Only 3 FPS games, according to vgchartz, sold over 1 million copies on N64.

I will not list all of the Xbox FPS, but there were 82 according to gamerankings.com. here are the top, oh, 25.

Halo 2 outsold Goldeneye at 8.46 million. Halo 1 sold 6.43 million. Others that sold over 1 million: Ghost Recon 1 and 2, Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2, Rainbow Six 3, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (spys in multi), MoH: Frontline, Doom 3, MoH: Rising Sun, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (were spys removed?), and CoD: Finest Hour. That's 13 games to 3 on a system that sold 24 million hardware compared to 32 million N64's. oh, and you could also count Morrowind, except magic instead of guns, but whatever.

PS2:

Timesplitters and Red Faction don't get enough credit; they came out before Halo. as you can see, though, Halo received the best reviews along with Perfect Dark and Goldeneye, with Halo 2 being #1. Halo 1 sold twice as much as any PS2 shooter.

PS2 FPS that sold 1 million: SW: Battlefront (3.24 million is the highest), Battlefront 2, Agent Under Fire, CoD: Finest Hour, CoD2, Ghost Recon, Red Faction (all of the above games sold more than Turok), Red Faction 2, and Black.

Only 9 games compared to 13 on Xbox, most higher rated on Xbox, despite a huge install base difference. Still, the selection was a lot more varied than N64.

So now, to your points directly:

1. You say CoD was only a "nominal success" on console before the current generation. That's interesting, because CoD: The Finest Hour and CoD 2: The Big Red One were both console spinoffs, not the PC versions, and both sold very well. Finest Hour outsold all N64 shooters except Goldeneye. CoD3, back to the main series, was developed for consoles only. None of those console games were developed by Infinity Ward, but the first 2 sold very well.

2. You say Turok sold better than any Xbox-era shooter other than Halo. Unless this site is wrong, I count 8 that sold more than Turok. 5 of those were on Xbox and among those 3 outsold it more just on Xbox. 4 if you count Morrowind.

3. You say Goldeneye was bigger than Halo, and yet Halo 2 sold more than Goldeneye and Halo wasn't exactly a slouch. Halo does deserve credit for spawning a lot of console FPS.  There were 62 FPs on PS2 and 82 on XBox, but only 17 on N64. The grand majority of those came after Halo. More sold over 1 million on Xbox despite a lower install base, and Halo 2 was the higest selling FPS ever on consoles...until Halo 3. So yeah, you are right that Goldeneye showed that FPS was "viable" on console, just like Wolfenstein showed it was viable on PC, and yet it was Halo that spawned the console FPS revolution like Doom did for PC.

I'm to going to argue that the Xbox wasn't a better consoles for first person shooters, because it was - though the Battlefront games and Splinter Cell were not first person shooters and I don't know why you list them.

The statement was that Halo legitimized console first person shooters. It didn't. I have acknowledged that it made it the center of the public eye in terms of video games, at least for a while, but it did not show that a first person shooter could be done well on consoles. Goldeneye did.

You're not going to win an argument based on pedantry when the operative word around which the argument is based is ignored.

until dual stick controls, which goldeneye didn't use, the control scheme for FPS was terrible.  Halo 1, with lan, and Halo 2, with online, showed that console FPS can work just like PC FPS.  Goldeneye didn't.

As I noted, Pandora Tomorrow included FPS in the multiplayer with the merc.  Spys vs merc was a hugely popular multiplayer mode at the time.  I wasn't sure if that mode was still in for Chaos theory.

LOL, wut? The Xbox outsold the N64? News to me. =\

Your personal opinion on the matter has exactly nothing to do with the fact that Goldeneye legitimized consoles first person shooters as their own medium in comparison to PC first person shooters. If you wwant to talk about the emulation of what could be done on the PC, Turok is actually closer than Halo was, since it had analog aiming and digital movement ala mouse and keyboard. And Turok came out in 1997 anyway, so Halo loses out even by that definition.

You can pretend, all you like, that Goldeneye was in some way deficient, but that won't change the reality that it showed that console first person shooters could be done right, in a way uniquely inherent to the consoles.

and before you go arguing semantics with the word legitimize again, look at what your response was.  He said that Goldeneye didn't spawn a mass of shooters and that Halo did.

You acted like that was ridiculous to say and then asked what franchises it spawned.  I gave you a long list of those.

You then say Goldeneye was more successful than the original Halo, which may be true, but it was not on a smaller userbase because the N64 sold 32 million and the Xbox sold 24 million and Halo was a freaking launch title.

His point remains.  I gave you that, like Wolfenstein on PC, Goldeneye "legitimized" the genre but it sure wasn't close to PC games.  Other than that, you have no reason to question his statements and are wrong.

You cannot even begin to pretend that Halo spawned the Tom Clancy games and Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. If you go down that route I can reject everything you say out of hand.

you have already proven yourself to be wrong (Goldeneye having a smaller userbase?!), but like I've already told you:  CoD1, CoD2, and CoD3 were made for console only.  The first 2 weren't the PC versions, they were spinoffs, and CoD3 was console only.  If that doesn't denote a shift to console, I don't know what to tell you.

The Pandora Tomorrow multiplayer had spy vs merc, which you apparently know nothing about, but to say that wasn't influenced by Halo pulling off mulitplayer on console is crazy.  microsoft established the online infracture to pull off games like that on consoles.

MoH deserves credit for the PS1 release, but it wasn't near the game that Halo was and it didn't spawn a bunch of shooters like Halo did.

Point conceded as to the N64's userbase. It is the only point which you will receive in this conversation, and affects the rest of the discussion not at all.

Call of Duties 1-3 were not made for console only. Each of them started off on the PC. They were not spawned by Halo, either - they probably owed more to the success of Medal of Honor on the PC.

One multiplayer mode does not magically change a third person stealth game into a first person shooter, stop being ridiculous. And Halo's matchmaking has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation insofar as "legitimizing console shooters" goes.

Halo did not spawn any huge series. Halo's experience isn't even intrinsic to consoles. It showed that you oculd get a PC-ish experience running on a console, and PC games started showing up on consoles thereafter.

It didn't spawn anything, it just showed developers that wiht some tweaking, the PC games they were already making could be shoehorned into the confines of a console's controls.

It did not legitimize first person shooters on consoles. Goldeneye did.

Halo showed that first person shooters on consoles were capable of being phenomenons. It also marked the signal for a metric ass-ton of PC ports to land. But it did not "spawn" many franchises that didn't already exist or owe more to other series, and it didn't spawn any that are still relevant in today's market.

The problem with most rts games is they're designed for the pc and then ported. Goldeneye and Halo both show that if you take a genre and specifically design it for a console it will do wonders. Thats why halo is somewhat floaty and has loads of vehicles etc etc. It was made for consoles and thats why it plays so well on consoles. The same hopefully can be said for halo wars. Its designed from the ground up for a gamepad, that is the only way that an RTS will be made to work properly on a console.

Adapting for a console isn't dumbing it down, its change based on necessity, which is a good thing because console players deserve to play a proper RTS designed for them not pc gamers.

Furthermore the RTS genre is slowly gaining in sales on the 360, just look at c&c3 which sold over 500k and end war which is over 600k. Not bad at all, not amazing either but the market is slowly growing and halo wars should hopefully intensify this market acceptance.